


The Iron Soldier

by spooky_nerd



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, BAMF Tony Stark, Clint Barton's Farm, Fake Character Death, First Kiss, First Time, Getting Together, Hurt Tony, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Tony Stark, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Memory Loss, Mind Control, Missions Gone Wrong, Pining Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony is the Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier AU, Winter Soldier Tony Stark, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-05-19 22:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19365193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spooky_nerd/pseuds/spooky_nerd
Summary: Tony Stark is lost on a mission and presumed dead. A year later, a soldier is sent to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. He wears a mask, but Steve could swear he recognizes those eyes.A little exploration into what-if territory.





	1. Chapter 1

The wind whips unforgivingly across his face and neck, stinging his eyes and stealing his breath. Overhead, dark clouds suffocate the bruised sky, hinting at the coming storm. The ground below their feet yields slightly as they walk through the cemetery, but the squelching of their boots in the mud cannot be heard over the howl of the wind as it whips through the trees, making the leaves hiss and carrying with it the scent of dirt and death. He doesn't look up as they walk, cannot bear to meet her gaze today of all days, so he lets his feet take him to the now-familiar spot. The route has worked its way into his muscle memory, and yet the trip never gets easier. Every time he reads the name etched in dark obsidian, a little piece of himself crumbles into dust. 

She is saying something he does not hear, does not want to hear. She places a hand on the cool stone, says something raw and lamenting in her native tongue, and steps back to give him room to speak his piece. Whatever words he would have said die on his tongue. He lets them rot until they are bitter and angry in his mouth, but he simply stands there, holding them in, staring at the gravestone, so smooth and polished he can see his own eyes staring back at him. Despite the bitterly cold day, his face and eyes are hot, stinging, salty, and then he feels the warmth sliding down his cheeks, leaving glistening tracks in its wake. It is a betrayal, a rebellion of his own body, and he inclines his head, not wanting her to see, even though she _**knows** , _because she always knows. A hand clasps his shoulder, strong enough that he can focus on the pressure and allow it to anchor him even as he feels the whole world could crumble apart around them in this moment.

They stand there long enough that his face is raw from the wind and she is switching her weight from one foot to the other, but she never lets go of his shoulder. He takes pity on her then, and gives a small nod. It's time to leave. Wordlessly, the lifeline pressed to his shoulder slips away, leaving a cold spot in its wake.

He shivers.

"Bye Tony," she whispers, and it's carried away with the wind.

* * *

And the thing of it is: Tony Stark hadn't died. He'd slipped from the face of the earth. After six months of searching in vain, the world had declared him dead. There had been a Times Square vigil. Everyone who had ever known or known of Tony had showed up. The secretary of defense spoke, as well as members of the U.N., but the most gut-wrenching testimony was the woman from Gulmira, Afghanistan whom Tony had rescued from the Ten Rings in 2008, on his first unofficial mission as Iron Man. The woman had recounted that day in stunning detail, and the crowd had wept.

"Tony Stark went through much suffering and rose out of that suffering like a phoenix from the ashes. He was a hero to me and to the world, and tonight we do not just grieve his death; we celebrate his life," she had said. Those words washed over Steve like a cool balm, and for a moment, he thought he might be able to heal from this.

But the world grieved and Steve agonized. A gravestone had been cut and placed in a private plot. Nothing lay under that gravestone, and _that_ was something that kept Steve up at night almost as much as the guilt he felt for losing Tony on that mission. He despised visiting that empty gravesite, but Nat strove for every bit of normalcy that she could bring to them, so she dragged him along with her when she visited. _It's not your fault_ , she would tell him, and sometimes, if he closed his eyes and shut out everything but the warm lilt of her voice, he could almost believe her.

Almost.

* * *

One thing that no one had suspected: Tony Stark had been the glue that held the Avengers together. 

They had vacated the Tower because being there had felt a bit like chasing ghosts. Every room held a memory of Tony, and it hurt like hell. Bruce went back to India, leaving them with nothing but an old, weather-beaten flip-phone and a promise to come to their aid if they ever called. Thor went back to Asgard with a similar promise but left no feasible way of contacting him. Steve and Nat moved into the new Avengers facility in upstate New York, and Clint stayed with them on occasion, when he wasn't off on a solo mission or off doing other things that Steve was too wary of unwanted intrusion to ask about. And with half the team gone, life at the new compound felt a little too much like playing house for Steve's taste. But he had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to, so he stayed. 

No one saw Steve except Nat and Clint, and he became something of an urban legend around S.H.I.E.L.D., his name whispered in secret like he was nothing but a myth. So the world moved on, and Steve Rogers wasted away up in his ivory tower, chasing the memory of a long-dead hero.

One thing that Steve had definitely expected: Tony Stark had held Steve together, and his death had torn Steve apart.

* * *

She rarely has the emotional capacity for introspection these days. But on The Anniversary, she allows it. 

She had chosen her room in the compound for strategic reasons. It overlooked the entrance so she had a clear view of any possible intruders. And the sunset from that vantage point was achingly beautiful. So, okay, she had chosen her room for **_mostly_** strategic reasons. She leans her head against the window, watching the sun set and letting the chill from the cool glass seep under her skin. She hugs the cardigan tighter around herself but does not move from the window seat. Her thoughts take a cold turn as the chill sets in deep.

The Avengers are falling apart. And she is powerless to stop it.

How do you mend a broken super-soldier? How do you track down a god? The only answer she can come up with: resurrect the dead. And that is a little bit outside of her area of expertise.

If they had actually found a body, it would've been easier for them to move on. It's an ugly thought, but she is past tears for now. Instead, she wants to scream. Instead, it boils inside of her, echoes maddeningly in her head, and she presses her forehead against the bullet-proof glass a little too hard until the urge passes.

Tony Stark: the arrogant, irreverent, insubordinate, **_brilliant_** man who had wormed his way into an assassin's heart, who had become like family to her, and then had been ripped away, leaving her standing vulnerable in the wake with a gaping wound in her chest in the spot he had once occupied. _Damn you, Stark,_ she thinks, not for the first time.  _Damn you._

* * *

**Zhelaniye.**

The restraints dig into his skin, opening up a sore.

**Zhelezo.**

It's an old wound by now, but it hurts nonetheless.

**Reaktor.**

By now, he's lost track of how many times they've done this.

**Rasvet.**

It hurts less now, because he has learned to fight it less.

**Vosem.**

Blood runs in rivulets down his arm as he pulls harder. Maybe he hasn't learned after all.

**Torgovets.**

His arms shake under the restraints, straining, aching, longing for freedom or for a fight or to obey, he doesn't know anymore.

**Devyat.**

Somewhere, far away, someone is screaming.

**Mstiteli.**

The screams are his.

**Odin.**

The small part of his mind that remains his thinks, this must be hell.

**Ovrag.**

*** * ***

Sleep is the bitter surrender to a battle he will never win. It drags him kicking and screaming into its depths, and in the small hours of the night, the tendrils of a nightmare curl around him, wracking his body with shivers. He bolts upright, lungs straining, the screams still echoing in his head. Still echoing in the room around him. His throat is raw and it prickles as he swallows thickly. He must have been screaming too.

When Tony had fallen, he didn't scream. But in the dreams, he always screams, angrily, bitterly, telling Steve he could've done more to save him, he should have done more. Tony had always had the gift of convincing anyone to believe anything he said just by how confidently he said it. Steve knew about the trick, but knowing was not enough to make him insusceptible. It had worked on him every time.

 _I'm so sorry, Tony,_ he thinks, not for the last time.

* * *

He wakes up, eyes crusted and dry and irritated from a night of crying silent tears, and it hits him like a freight train that he finally understands why anniversaries are so difficult. It's been a whole year since his best friend had disappeared, and he feels every single day, every single minute of it in this moment. 

In the kitchen, Nat and Clint are seated at the breakfast table, leaning against one another at an impossible angle, holding one another upright in a way that must defy at least one law of physics. In the spot where Steve usually sits is a ridiculously large green smoothie and a glass of expensive scotch. Tony's favorite. He downs the latter gratefully, feeling it slide down his throat, savoring it, because if it won't get him drunk at least it will still burn.

"One year," Nat whispers. "One year, and all I can think about is how he never fully came alive in the morning without his coffee." Steve catches the barest wisp of a smile, he thinks. "It's the little things you miss," she says.

Clint nods. "I miss the banter. The man had a comeback for anything, and a nickname for every occasion." The words are worn in, practiced, and Steve wonders if Clint had said them to Nat last night when they had told him they were going to bed but he knew they would end up getting drunk instead. They had known not to bother him on that night.

Steve nods, takes in a breath, and his chest is filled up with all the little things. The way Steve could always tell the difference between a fake smile and a real smile, because the corners of Tony's eyes always crinkled when he really smiled. The way the arc reactor glowed through the fabric of his shirts and illuminated his face in the dark, casting strangely beautiful shadows there. The way he had begun to look at Steve towards the end, like he _**knew** , _and Steve  _ **knew** , _but they both knew that fate had different plans for them. Maybe somewhere out there, there's a universe where they're both happy, Steve thinks.

Nat is right. It's the little things. Filling him up. Suffocating him.

Steve remains silent.

* * *

The oppressive darkness of the room is staved off only by a single solitary lightbulb. It sways tauntingly over the asset strapped to the metal chair. The asset's breathing has settled noticeably, and his head is inclined, a few strands of hair hanging into his eyes. The mask covers his nose and mouth. With his face obscured, it is impossible to tell the status of the asset.

"Iron Soldier, are you ready to comply?"

The asset looks up, eyes dark and void of emotion. Ah yes, so it has worked at last.

"Ready to comply."

* * *

The attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D weapons storage facility had been quick and cripplingly effective. The guards reported only the cold glint of metal and then an earth-shaking rumble as the entire bunker exploded beneath their feet. The blast had burnt everything to the ground. The night had glowed red as the flames licked their way up to the surface, engulfing the surrounding landscape. The lone figure had been spotted through the trees, running at breakneck speed, hands glinting in the blood-red light of the burning forest.

* * *

One morning, they come down to breakfast, and Nick Fury is already seated at the small table, sipping a cappuccino and midway through a cheese and spinach omelette. 

"Good morning, Avengers," he says, far too animatedly for the hour. "Have a seat."

* * *

"So you want us to babysit a weapons bunker smack in the middle of nowhere on the off chance that some crazy metal mystery man _maybe_ comes and tries to blow it up?"

"Well-done, Barton," Fury drawls. "You're starting to catch on." His eye glints predatorily in Clint's direction and Clint turns his gaze to the window with a clouded expression.

Nat looks to Steve then, obviously still operating under the delusion that he is some kind of leader to them. As if their team hasn't fallen completely apart under his leadership. Fury looks to Steve, and Steve thinks that he at least must see what Clint and Nat cannot. Steve is no leader. Not anymore. But Steve has felt the inactivity eating away at him for weeks now, so he nods. "We'll do it."

* * *

The forested area enclosing the weapons bunker is inappropriately picturesque, as if unaware of the billions of dollars worth of destruction concealed in the ground beneath it. Steve is affronted by this strange juxtaposition as he stands in the open clearing in front of the bunker, his breath rising in clouds of warm air to paint the sky. Snow litters the landscape, but Steve wears nothing but his standard kevlar stealth armor. The serum keeps him inordinately warm regardless of the season.

Clint, on the other hand, does not share Steve's indifference towards sub-zero temperatures, if his grunts of discomfort over the comms are anything to go by.

"This is ridiculous. I have been in this goddam tree for 5 hours. If this guy doesn't show in the next hour, I say we pack it up and go home. I would kill for a cup of hot chocolate right now. Fuck Fury and his goddam stupid busy work assignments." A friction-y sound fills the comms and Steve looks up to see Clint rubbing his hands together. In the dying light, only Clint's silhouette is visible, framed by wispy puffs of breath.

"Alright, Clint, we'll see what happens," Steve says.

The hour comes and goes and Steve stays and Clint says nothing more about it. Nat has not spoken the entire time, and if Steve didn't know her, he might actually be afraid she had left. If he listens carefully, though, his enhanced hearing picks up the quiet rise and fall of her controlled breaths. If Steve decided that they should remain in that spot until the end of the world, she would still be there, her breaths laying down a quiet soundtrack for the rest of existence. He doesn't deserve this level of loyalty, he thinks. Not anymore. Especially not from Nat. She is a force of nature, subservient to none, born from blood and death and dangerous subterfuge and yet ...

And yet, here she is.

His mind follows a similar meandering path until the sun hangs low on the horizon, and then it happens.

Clint gives a grunt and then a sickening snap splits the air as the branch he was perched on breaks. He hits the ground with a thud and doesn't get up.

Steve hears Nat's sharp intake of breath and knows that she is on high alert now. He drops into a ready stance, knees nearly touching the ground, so close he can feel the chill of the snow starting to seep in. For a moment, all he can hear is his own breath and the steady sway and swish of the tree branches overhead. Then, a sound from Nat's direction and a series of soft thuds, muffled by the thick blanket of snow that covers everything. Steve breaks into a run. By the time he gets to her position, she is laid out on the ground, hair splayed out like a bloody halo around her head, eyes open but dazed. 

"I'm fine, go!" she yells, inclining her head back toward the bunker.

Steve follows the footprints in the snow until he sees him. Dark brown hair, greasy and unkempt, a few loose strands falling on the man's forehead. Grey and black kevlar armor, not dissimilar to Steve's in its appearance. About Clint's height, maybe a bit shorter. Some kind of metallic fingerless gloves on the man's hands, glinting angrily in the pale glow of dusk. A mask obscures the man's mouth and nose, wrapped around the bottom half of his face like a vice. But those eyes, they make Steve's knees go weak because they're so hauntingly familiar.

Someone is gasping in shuddering breaths until he realizes that it's him. "...Tony?" he asks. Scarcely a whisper. Nearly a prayer.

The man cocks his head to the side, but otherwise does not respond. Then, a flash of metal and an intense flash of light and heat and Steve's feet disconnect from the ground. He lands several yards away, a steady whine building in his ears. Distantly he thinks someone is calling his name, but all he can think is _those eyes._ And the gloves, he realizes. They were red.

* * *

"Would someone please tell me what the hell kind of shit-show I witnessed out there tonight?" Fury is as close to yelling as he ever gets. He is pacing an angry trench across the floor of the conference room, his coat swishing and flicking righteously behind him. The uncharacteristic fervor is mildly concerning to Steve, and judging by the steely expressions on Nat and Clint's faces, they would agree.

Fury's eye narrows its gaze at Steve. "Rogers, report."

Steve, once a soldier always a soldier, straightens a little in his chair. "The masked man disabled Barton and attacked Romanov. I ran to assist Romanov, but he was already gone. By the time I got back to the bunker, the charges were already set and he detonated them when I spotted him." He barely stops himself from adding a 'sir' to the end. He does not mention the man's eyes. It feels like a strangely intimate detail and much too risky to share with Nick Fury.

Fury places a hand on the conference table and seems to draw every ounce of authority out of the room and into himself. "I don't know what this man's game is." His voice is dangerously low. It's somehow more terrifying than if he were to yell. "But he just blew up _both_ of our weapons bunkers. That means, as of today, the only weapon S.H.I.E.L.D has in its arsenal is the Avengers. And right now, that's not looking too good for us. So the three of you need to get this act together and prepare yourselves for a fight. Because you can be damn sure there's one coming."

Steve fights the urge to let his entire body deflate as soon as Fury whisks out of the room. No sooner have his coattails flapped around the corner than Natasha is fixing Steve with her patent X-ray gaze. He pushes away the desire to fidget as she excavates his inner turmoil and lays it out on the conference table for all to see.

"Steve, I saw what happened at the bunker. Why didn't you fight?"

He is silent for a moment, weighing his options. In his periphery, he sees Clint lean in closer. Keeping secrets is a futile endeavor when living with two spies, he has found. But honesty in this situation could very well get him committed. Because what he thought he'd seen was impossible. And yet, Steve's been in the business long enough to know that very few things are completely impossible. Improbable, maybe. But bets are hedged and wars are won on improbability. Steve's very existence is an improbability.

Before he can stop them, the words are spilling out. "I thought I saw Tony, Nat."

To her immense credit, Nat does not immediately call in a S.H.I.E.L.D psychiatrist for a mental eval. She sits on the words, turning them over carefully, nodding to herself, before looking back at Steve. He hates what he sees in her eyes then. They are soft and pitying, and a bit shinier than they had been just moments before. "Tony's dead, Steve," she says quietly.

And with those words the floor falls out beneath him. Steve rubs a hand through his beard and brings it to rest over his mouth, not trusting his own voice. Because it's almost like she's killed him all over again with those words. The room is intensely silent. Leather creaks as Clint fidgets. "Nat..." Clint begins, but then whatever else he had planned to say is swallowed up by the oppressive silence.

"Steve, I know the anniversary has been hard ..." she beings, but he's shaking his head so adamantly it's enough to throw her off track. She sinks back further into her chair, yielding the floor to him.

"That man ... I know what I saw, Nat. He had Tony's eyes, and the tech he was wearing looked like Stark tech. Look, I _know_ it sounds crazy and maybe I'm wrong, but what if I'm not?"

"Did he say anything?" Clint asks, and Steve feels an immense gratitude blooming in his chest, because at least Clint is humoring him, if nothing else.

"No. But when I said his name, he ... hesitated."

It sounds ridiculous as soon as he hears it, but Nat and Clint share a quick look and seem to come to some silent agreement. 

"Okay," Nat says. "So we'll track him down. Either way, it'll be a win for us if we can find him and put a stop to all of this."

He really does not deserve Nat.


	2. Chapter 2

Somewhere in the cavernous concrete room, a pipe is leaking. Each drip settles deeper and deeper into his nerves. His jaw spasms as his teeth grit painfully and his fists are clenched in a white-knuckle death grip around his knees, but he does not dare move, because he was ordered to stay and he must comply. He wants to scream, but they did not give him permission to scream. He wants to die. But they would never let him die. He is too valuable, they tell him. He is an _asset_.

The dripping is louder now. Something wet slides down the side of his face, leaving a mercifully cool trail in its wake. He thinks of the man in the forest with the startlingly blue eyes. The man had called him something. The more he tries to recall the name now, the quicker it fades from his mind, like a dream. But his reaction to it had been a visceral one. A weak, trembly feeling that spread up through him all the way from his toes and settled in his knees. There was something inexplicably warm hidden in that name. Something he couldn't place but that felt suspiciously like hope.

He hadn’t told them about the man with the blue eyes. The last thing he wants is another reset. He shudders mentally at the thought, because he cannot bring himself to actually move, not when they told him to stay. They had ordered him to give them every detail of the mission, but he had held back the details of his encounter with the man, because there is a very small part of his mind still belongs to him alone, and it is filled with hopeful things. That is something he will not allow them to take from him.

It had taken a year for them to bring him to this point. The details are fuzzy, but he remembers the feelings: pain and longing and repetition and a desperate sense of helplessness. Even now, they have to reset him often. He suspects that the remnants of his old self have something to do with this. He gets the feeling that he was a stubborn bastard in his previous life, and he is grateful for it. Perhaps the man with the blue eyes had known him in this previous life. The thought comes unexpectedly to him, but he rolls it around in his mind and it feels right.

As his thoughts turn back to the man, the viselike grip he has on his knees eases up by a fraction. He feels almost … lighter. Like the cloud over his mind from the last reset is lifting a bit. His thoughts are clearer, and he thinks maybe the man _had_ known him, somehow.

The door to his “room” swings open with an eery screech of old, rusted hinges. The thin man walks through the door, and the hair on the back of his neck stands up. He does not like the thin man.

The thin man grins, a flash of sharp teeth and red gums and something more carnal and predatory that makes him want to pounce. He does not. He knows what is coming. There is no escaping this part.

“Good morning, Iron Soldier. Are you ready to comply?”

“Ready to comply,” his own gruff voice says, hoarse from disuse. He feels separate from his body, as if watching himself from afar.

“Good.” The man tosses three photos at him. They land haphazardly against his chest and he clutches at them. They are photos of the three people who had been guarding the bunker. The blue eyes cut through his soul, however much or little of it he has left.

“You met the Avengers last night. Hawkeye. Black Widow. Captain America. I want you to kill them. Can you do this?”

Blue burns the hottest of all, and his soul is burnt to ash by the heat of the blue eyes. All that remains of him is a thin shell filled with ash and blood. He will comply.

“…Yes.”

* * *

In a messy investigation culminating in the death of two agents, S.H.I.E.L.D finds the mole. An undercover agent sent by Hydra to infiltrate and excavate. Fury slaps the file down on Steve's desk, startling him to attention. After a grueling interrogation, the mole had given up the location of the next strike. A S.H.I.E.L.D foreign intelligence base in the upstate, just an hour from the Avengers compound. 

"Get the team ready, Rogers. We're ending this _tonight_."

* * *

The snow falls soft and fast on the secluded landscape, covering everything in a thick blanket of silence. Even Steve with his enhanced hearing has to strain to pick up the subtle nuances of his surroundings. He has been standing in the same spot for going on two hours, with nothing to show for it. The blank landscape is the perfect canvas for stray thoughts, and his mind turns to the masked soldier. He shuffles his feet and shakes out his arms, trying to dispel the sudden shaky feeling that's inhabited his bones. His stomach turns unpleasantly and he swallows thickly, hoping the sound doesn't carry over the comms. 

"Why do I feel like we just did this?" Clint says in a low, dangerous voice from his position on the roof of the newly evacuated base. He's still carrying himself a bit carefully since his fall from the tree a few nights ago. Steve can read the discomfort in the hard, forced lines of his silhouette on the rooftop, in the way he keeps arching his back.

"Remember, we're not trying to kill here. We're trying to bring him in," Steve says, electing to ignore the complaint. 

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Phasers are set to stun, Captain," Clint mumbles.

Nat snorts quietly and Steve assumes some kind of pop culture reference has gone over his head yet again. He can hardly spare the energy to care about that tonight. Not when his heart is in his throat and his hands won't stop shaking and his entire mind is clouded over with the memory of those eyes. 

Then, he hears them. Soft footfalls, barely louder than the snow settling on the ground around them.

"Nat, 2 o'clock," he whispers, making his way quickly toward the noise. 

"Got it."

Steve makes his way quickly around the rear of the base, but when he rounds the corner, he finds Nat, brow furrowed in confusion. He stands stock-still, ears straining to differentiate the steady thump of Nat's heartbeat and the nest of birds somewhere overhead and the groaning of the trees under the weight of the snow and wind. 

Then Clint yells in alarm, and they're racing up to the roof, boots pounding up the metallic emergency staircase, sweaty palms slipping on the rails. When they reach the roof, Clint is fighting for his life, throwing fists and blocking with his bow as the masked soldier pummels him into the gravel. Metal glints off the gloves, and a low whine fills the air. In a flash, Steve and Nat are sent rocketing backwards by an energy blast. And Steve would know that sound anywhere.

"Tony!" he calls, struggling to his feet. The soldier freezes for a fraction of a second, but it's enough for Clint to sweep his legs out from under him. He lands with a grunt, and then the low whine is building again, so Steve grabs one of the gloves and yanks with all his strength. Metal goes flying and the soldier is propelled backwards slightly by the force of Steve's grip. He uses the leverage to grab Steve's ankle and bring him down. Then, he pushes hard off the ground and kicks up into a standing position, fists ready. Nat dives toward him with a yell like some kind of wild berserker and they trade blows, fists flying. Steve runs to Nat's aid and the soldier is fighting both of them, until Steve hears the tell-tale whistle of one of Clint's arrows. The arrow embeds itself into the soldier's kevlar armor, and then the soldier is spasming as electricity arcs out from the arrow. The soldier hits the gravel, still spasming. 

When the arrow is spent, Steve throws himself on top of the soldier, straddling him and enclosing both hands in the vibranium handcuffs he had brought with them. Nat grabs his feet and does the same with his legs. Clint stands with an arrow pointed at the soldier, hair whipping wildly in the howling wind.

Steve rolls him over and his hands tremble as he places a hand over the mask. The soldier glares up at him inscrutably, and Steve thinks he sees a flash of fear in the eyes. Something catches his attention and he realizes the front chest-plate of the soldier's armor is a removable leather piece. He rips it off brazenly, revealing a mesmerizing starburst pattern, glowing, lit from underneath by...Steve pulls the mask off.

Nat gasps painfully, whispering harshly in Russian, muffling it with the hand she clasps over her mouth. Clint's arrow drops to the ground with a thunk and he lets out a soft curse. A loud ring is building and building in Steve's ears and his breaths are tearing raggedly from his chest and everything in him _hurts_ because oh god it's _Tony_. His hair is longer and his eyes are set deeper than Steve remembers but it's  _Tony._ Alive. Right in front of them.

Steve goes down on one knee next to his friend. His hand reaches out jerkily to touch his arm. "Tony," he whispers.

Tony hesitates, just for a moment, but Steve sees the confusion there, the fear. Then, his expression clears and he fixes Steve with a look straight out of hell. "Who's Tony?"

He spits out the words like they're venomous and Steve withdraws his hand like he's been singed by them. The man - Tony, he has to remind himself - sneers. Then his head is thrown back and his entire body convulses and then lies still. Clint's arm is still raised, and the arrow is sticking out of Tony's chest. Clint's eyes are dark and determined, and Steve remembers a time when they glowed eerily blue under the control of another and it all clicks for him then like a blow to the gut.

"We need to get him to S.H.I.E.L.D," Clint says.

* * *

 _I failed._ His first thought when he wakes. His head pounds out a steady painful throb, and he reaches a hand up only to find that it's strapped down tight. He's traded one chair for another. His eyes hurt when he moves them around in his head, but he takes in his surroundings with barely a wince. The "room" is actually some kind of glass box framed by large metal beams. The back of his neck tingles and he realizes he's being watched carefully by several people he doesn't know and three that he has just tried to kill.

The mission comes back to him then, and he remembers the blue eyes. They're looking at him now and he meets them boldly. The man turns quickly and says something to a one-eyed man in a trench coat. Then, he's in the box.

The man looks different from the pictures his handlers had given him. His hair is longer, somewhat darker, and he has a full beard. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his face is pinched in a painfully severe expression that mirrors - concern? fear? He doesn't know.

"Do you know me?" the man asks him quietly.

He nods, remembering now what the thin man had called him. The blue eyes widen and fill with something akin to anticipation. "You're Captain America. They sent me to kill you," he says. The words come out hoarse and rough and he can't remember that last time he's spoken to anyone that wasn't a handler. He tips his chin up to meet the man's eyes. The blue eyes cloud over, and he gets the sense that he's disappointed this man somehow. 

The man pulls a hand roughly through his hair. His chest collapses with a forceful sigh, as if he is pushing something out of himself. The blue eyes meet his again, and he fights the urge to look away.

"My name is Steve Rogers. You're Tony Stark. We worked together, we were friends, you  _know_ me, Tony."

 _Steve._ The name snags at something in the back of his mind, and he struggles to pull it forward, to  _remember_. His head drops down and he blinks rapidly, trying in vain to dispel the fog shrouding his mind, suffocating him into submission.

* * *

He's starting to fight it, Steve realizes belatedly. Tony's breathing is worryingly erratic, and his eyes are wide and unseeing. 

He kneels down in front of Tony so they are face-to-face. "Come, on, Tony. You know me. You can remember," he says softly. Out of habit, he reaches out to touch Tony's arm. It's the wrong move. Tony's head shoots back and connects painfully with the back of the restraining chair. The suspicion, the hatred in his eyes is painful, and Steve backs away carefully toward the door once it becomes apparent he is doing more harm than good. With a final look back at Tony, he exits the containment cube.

"He knows me," he tells them. He spares a look back at Tony, who is sagging back in the chair, head inclined and eyes closed. He could be sleeping if not for the erratic up and down movement of his chest. "Or, at least he's trying to remember."

"This is so fucked up," Clint whispers. "He's been - where has he been for a _year_? What did they do to him?"

Nat has not spoken. Her arms are crossed, hands digging painfully into her forearms. She looks shell-shocked.

"We'll find out," Fury says, raising a hand in a beckoning motion. A man Steve does not recognize materializes out of the crowd of nameless S.H.I.E.L.D agents. "We brought in a professional. Dr. Zemo is one of the best psychiatrists in the world. He specializes in trauma."

Steve bristles. "I don't see how sending in a stranger is going to help the situation. He seemed to recognize me somewhat. I think if I-"

Fury holds up a hand that makes Steve fist his hands inside his jacket pockets to hide the anger trembling through them. " _Captain_ Rogers, your concern is noted. But you're out of your depth here. It's time to let the professionals step in."

Steve steps away before he says or does something he will regret. A hand lights on his shoulder, and he starts to recoil until he realizes that it's Nat. "I don't like this," he whispers to her. She nods. "I know. Me neither. But let's just hang back for now. We don't want to make any enemies here, for Tony's sake." He knows she's right, because she's always right. He acquiesces.

The man - Zemo, was it? - is speaking to Tony, who looks very unimpressed. It's so  _Tony_ that Steve almost smiles. 

"Tell me, you have seen many horrors, haven't you?" the man is saying.

Tony regards him indifferently. "Yeah, I don't wanna talk about it," he says simply. The corner of Nat's mouth twitches slightly.

The man smiles, and something about it sets Steve's teeth on edge. "That's alright, we only have to talk about one unpleasant memory today." The man pulls out a book from his briefcase. The cover bright red leather, embossed with an intricate starburst pattern. Tony's expression morphs into one of horror. They both recognize that pattern.

Steve takes an involuntary step toward the containment cube. "Hold, on, what is he doing?"

" **Zhelaniye** ," the man says.

Tony's eyes are squeezed shut tightly. His entire face contorted in pain. "Stop," he whispers.

"What is he doing? Get him out of there!" Steve shouts.

His voice is authoritative enough to command the room. The woman manning the controls presses a series of buttons on the panel in front of her and then looks at Fury in confusion. "Controls are down," she says.

"Damnit," Fury whispers. And then to anyone in the room who will listen, "Get Zemo out of there!"

Zemo is speaking more words that Steve does not understand. " **Zhelezo**. **Reaktor**." Tony groans and continues to beg him to stop. Something cold and heavy grips Steve's stomach. He grabs his shield and runs at breakneck speed toward the containment cube.

" **Rasvet**. **Vosem**. **Torgovets**." Steve brings the shield down hard on the glass, and it splinters slightly. Tony is straining against the restraints, grunting angrily with the effort.

" **Devyat**." The cracks splinter outwards. Steve feels a little give in the glass. A drop of sweat is sliding down Tony's throat.

" **Mstiteli**." Tony yells angrily, glaring hellishly at Zemo. Steve's arm is burning and shaking with the effort.

" **Odin**." The restraints are creaking. A small opening breaks through the glass. Something red wizzes by Steve's head and through the opening, and the confiscated bracelet lands on Tony's wrist, blooming outward along his hand until the glove is fully formed. The restraints snap like a toothpick then and he falls out of the chair, half-kneeling on the floor, head bowed, just as Zemo says the final word.

" **Ovrag**." Tony is still. There is an air of finality about it, and Steve stops pounding against the glass to look on with mounting horror.

Zemo approaches Tony slowly. Everyone in the room is holding their breath, poised for disaster. The only sound is Tony's ragged breathing, and this is the moment that will haunt Steve's dreams, he knows.

"Iron Soldier," Zemo says quietly, dangerously. "Are you ready to comply?"

The Iron Soldier raises his head. "Ready to comply."

 * * *

That familiar whine cuts through the air, but this time Steve is ready. He rolls backwards, feeling the heat of the blast above him as it barely misses him. Glass shatters all around him as the blast bursts through the containment cube and the Iron Soldier steps out with Zemo right behind him.

Several S.H.I.E.L.D agents step up, but Tony incapacitates them far too easily, using moves that are far more brutal than Steve has ever seen him use before. Nat runs up and Zemo points in her direction.

"Kill her and get me out of here." he orders.

Tony sets Nat in his sights, eyes narrowed into dangerous, dark slits. Clint fires an arrow, but Tony catches it deftly in one hand without even turning away from Nat. He sends a repulsor blast at Clint and it rockets him back against the wall. Nat charges him, then. She throws a heavy punch to his head, and he catches it with the gloved hand. She grits her teeth and strains, but his grip is a vice and as she looks into Tony's eyes, her battle-hardened facade slips for a moment, and Steve sees the pain there. Tony's other hand grabs her throat, and he slams her against the wall. "You could at least remember me," she grunts. Her legs kick wildly and Steve realizes her feet aren't even touching the ground. Her free hand struggles for purchase, but her breaths are reedy and desperate, and Steve knows she is fading.

He yells out his last ditch effort. "Tony, stop!"

Tony fixes him with wide eyes, as if seeing him for the first time, and to Steve's great surprise, he lets go of Nat. She slides to the ground, coughing and gasping and Tony looks torn between finishing her off and listening to Steve.

"Fight it, Tony!" he says. "You're stronger than this. They don't control you."

Tony's head is bent low now, and his hands grasp frantically at his hair. He is breathing shakily and Steve knows he's fighting it with all of his being. With nothing else to lose, he approaches Tony slowly. "Come on, Tony, _think._ We're your friends. You don't wanna kill us. _Fight this,_ Tony."

Tony sinks down shakily to his knees, head cradled in his hands. Steve keeps up a soft, steady mantra of familiar things. "Your name is Tony Stark. I'm Steve Rogers. We've fought together. We're friends. _Think,_ Tony.  _Remember._ "

The anguished sound Tony makes hurts Steve down to his core, but he kneels in front of Tony and continues even more softly. He feels Nat behind him, keeping completely still, not daring to move lest she break the spell. "We're not your enemies, Tony. We're here to help you, because we need you. We're not a team without you. Fight 'em, Tony. Show 'em who you are."

"Iron Soldier!" Zemo yells.

The gloved hand hits the concrete floor with a loud bang. The floor splinters underneath it. 

"No!" Steve yells.

" **Zhelaniye** ," Zemo begins. 

And then Tony blasts him, sending him flying backwards. He lands several yards away with a weak groan and lies still. "Shut up," Tony says to him through gritted teeth.

Amazement pulls at Steve's face and the corner of his mouth twists up in a crooked smile. He lets out a shaky breath of relief. One problem down, one to go, he thinks. The room is incredibly still now. No one else has dared to move for several minutes, as if afraid to break whatever connection Steve has formed with Tony. He knows they're waiting on him to make the next move.

"Can you stand?" he asks Tony quietly. He gets a small nod in response, and he steps back, mindful not to touch Tony as he gets to his feet somewhat unsteadily.

He hears the quiet order from Fury, then. "Get him back into containment." 

"Hold on," Steve says, but agents are already moving towards them. He sees Tony's shoulders go tight and tense in his periphery and steps in front of him protectively. "He's not a prisoner. He doesn't need-"

"He just tried to kill Agent Romanov!" Fury yells back.

Nat, who is still on the floor leaning heavily against the wall, shakes her head. "He didn't know what he was doing, Fury," she rasps.

Steve hears the whine of the repulsors behind him and spins around. "Tony, no-" but the blast hits the wall instead of the S.H.I.E.L.D agents. It creates an opening large enough for Tony to fit through, and in a flash he is diving through the hole. "Tony, wait!" Steve calls. Tony turns around for a second, and Steve catches a glimpse of something familiar in his eyes. Then, he runs.


	3. Chapter 3

And once more, just like that, Tony Stark slips quietly from the face of the earth. 

* * *

From Steve's position on the bed, he watches the slow death of the day. It's startlingly beautiful, and he sits cross-legged, the book in his hand now forgotten, staring as the day sinks into night. He remembers with a wince of regret the feeling of the black leather trench coat as he had crumpled it in his fist, the way he had stared straight into the eye and had been met with a disappointing lack of emotion there. The light tugging sensation from behind him as Clint had grabbed his uniform and yanked him back. The flash of red as Nat had placed herself in between him and Fury. The warning glint in her eyes as she had told him to back up. The burning rage as he had turned away, feeling _pathetic. Useless._

And Fury had said nothing, had just let it all happen with surreal calm.

The sigh pulls itself compulsorily from his chest and he realizes he's been holding his breath. The look on Tony's face has haunted him for days. Each and every time their search hits another dead end, he sees those eyes. He'd really thought he'd never see those eyes again. Then, the unimaginable had happened: Tony Stark had come back from the dead. And that should've been it. It should have been _over_ after that.

Somewhere in the multiverse, or maybe just in the recesses of Steve's imagination, there is a world where they found Tony alive and well and that was the end of it. But here and now, all Steve can see is the way those eyes had looked at him, right before Tony had disappeared again. He gets the sick, nagging feeling that that look had been Tony saying goodbye.

His chest hurts at the thought. And he wonders, not for the first time, when Tony Stark had sunk his hooks into him so deep. He thinks back to the months leading up to Tony's disappearance. They had been growing closer. Setting aside their petty differences and finally acknowledging their mutual respect for one another, or as Nat had so eloquently said, "putting down the rulers".

Everyone had seen it, had joked about them "making eyes" at one another. But no one had realized how close to home those jokes had actually hit for Steve, because lately, it had felt like he was seeing a whole new Tony Stark. One who packaged his feelings in smart retorts for fear of wearing them on his sleeve. One who showed his concern for the team by constantly upgrading their equipment to keep them as safe and effective in the field as possible. One who had played second fiddle to Steve with Howard Stark for his entire childhood (Tony had told him about that one night after a few drinks) and yet still held Captain America as his hero, and later, his friend.

In short, Tony Stark was a kind, generous bastard, and Steve hated how much he loved him.

He is pulled away from these too-soft thoughts by the light rapping of knuckles on his door. He turns, and Nat is standing there, wearing that open and honest face that he hates because it always drags his emotions to the surface. The bed dips slightly as she sits next to him, close but just not touching. He feels the warmth radiate from her arm as she props it up on her knee right next to his, mirroring his position.

"We'll find him, Steve." The words are soft but sure, and every fibre of his being yearns to believe them. They sit in silence, and the day slips away.

* * *

One week later, and Steve should really know by now that Nat is always right.

Undeniable proof of this comes in the form of a phone call from one of her contacts in Vermont of all places. There is talk of a man who slips quietly in and out of a small extended-stay motel off the beaten path. Pays in cash. Keeps his head down. And bears a striking resemblance to the late, great Tony Stark.

Steve is reminded of an undercover mission he and Tony had gone on a few months before Tony had gone missing. Before everything had gone to shit. 

S.H.I.E.L.D had put them in a dilapidated old motel, something about 'keeping a low profile', but Tony had insisted that Fury was just cheap. More than the mission itself, it was those nights in the motel room that really stuck with Steve. Two men whose tentative truce was just beginning to blossom into friendship, corralled into a sort of forced domesticity in the microcosm of that motel room. It had been, if anything, a social experiment. 

And yet, against all odds, Steve and Tony had gotten along amazingly well. The nights were his favorite part, when they'd settle down, Steve with a book and Tony with another book or a StarkPad or sometimes both at once, which Steve could hardly fathom. And when they weren't enjoying a companionable silence, they talked. About Steve's life before the ice, about Tony's life before Afghanistan, about Steve's drawings or Tony's inventions, about the team, about S.H.I.E.L.D, about everything. And Steve had loved every minute of it. The way Tony's eyes lit up when he talked about a subject that interested him was captivating. Tony had brilliant insight, an inherent part of his problem-solving nature, and Steve's admiration had grown substantially during those talks.

One night, Tony had shot straight up after a nightmare with a low hiss. Steve had feigned sleep until he settled and then turned over to see Tony lying on his back with an arm resting over his eyes. "Can't sleep?" he'd asked, hoping the words didn't sound heavy with any implications. Tony had turned his head to him then. His face had looked far too pale in the washed-out glow from the neon sign outside the window. "Nah. You too?" Words spoken carefully, with only a slight tremor.

"Nope."

Tony had sighed a world-weary sigh, then, and when he'd collected his breath, had said, "I guess the lives we lead aren't really conducive to being well-rested." It was a truth that no one had spoken to Steve before but that resonated with him deeply. But instead, he had said, "Back in the war, if I couldn't sleep on a mission, I'd draw. Or if it was a few of us, we'd tell stories. That always helped me a lot." Tony had been silent and Steve was worried he'd been too open, but then Tony had said in a tone of playful disbelief, "Am I about to get a bedtime story from Captain America?" Steve had snorted and called him an ass and then told the story anyway. Just a small anecdote about the Howling Commandos, but he'd watched Tony's face as the words had washed over him, and he'd looked ... peaceful. Steve had watched as his features relaxed and his blinks grew exponentially longer. Eventually, Tony had drifted off, but Steve finished the story anyway, ending it with a soft "goodnight, Tony."

Another night, as they were leaving a party which they'd attended under-cover, Tony had nicked a bottle of Scotch. He'd brandished it in the car with a triumphant megawatt smile, and Steve had opened his mouth to admonish him, but then he'd taken one look at the label and  _damn_ if that wasn't a good Scotch. So much to Tony's amusement, Steve had let it slide. 

Tony hadn't known that Steve couldn't get drunk. When Steve had mentioned it, Tony's eyes had glinted with that familiar mark of fascination that Steve now recognized as the look Tony got when he was trying to figure something out. Talk had turned to the serum and genetics and Steve's metabolism and Steve discovered, unsurprisingly, that Tony became very talkative when he drank. Steve's mind goes back to that night frequently now, the way Tony had looked, still dressed in his rumpled suit from the party, tie slung haphazardly around his shoulders, hair sticking up in all directions from the way he'd been running his hands through it tiredly. The deep smell of his cologne mixed with Scotch. Tony hadn't been inordinately intoxicated that night, but he'd had enough to loosen his tongue a little, and he'd told Steve many things that night that Steve would hold close to his heart.

Howard was not a kind father to Tony. It was a hurtful revelation for Steve, who had considered Howard a close friend before the ice. Tony had shrugged off Steve's concern, telling him it was a long time ago and he was over it, and that Howard was a great man so Steve shouldn't feel guilty for remembering their friendship fondly. But it had hurt Steve all the same, to know that the man Steve had known wasn't the same man who Tony had known.

Tony had had a poster of Captain America in his room as a boy. The admission, which had come up in a story about Howard, surprised both of them. Tony had looked down into his glass suspiciously before setting it carefully on the night table and pushing it away, and Steve had battled between the urge to laugh at Tony's behavior and the urge to be incredibly, awkwardly touched by Tony's honesty. And then Tony had said, eyes wide and slightly horrified, "Shit, I thought I'd take that one to the grave," and Steve had lost the battle with both. Then, surprising the both of them yet again, Steve had said "If it makes you feel any better, Clint gave me an Iron Man plush for Christmas last year as a gag gift and I still have it." 

The memory of Tony's bark of laughter after this admission was now preserved in Steve's sketchbook. It had been a beautifully rare, candid moment of genuine laughter, and Steve had felt like he was experiencing something special. Something most other people never had the pleasure of seeing. The real Tony Stark. He wonders now if he will ever get to hear that laugh again, if Tony will ever remember that undercover op, and for the hour-long flight to Vermont in the Quinjet, Steve's thoughts bounce turbulently around the what-ifs.

* * *

The motel room is cramped, dilapidated, and empty. A smell of mildew permeates the air and there are stains in strange places. Steve's eyes are drawn particularly to an odd, orange one on the ceiling.

Clint lets out a low whistle. "Great digs."

"Yeah, Clint, it looks a little like your old apartment," Nat says with a wicked half-grin. Clint shrugs, because, yeah.

With nothing left to do but wait, Steve explores the room. There is a small stack of clothes in the dresser drawer, none of them Tony's style. A notebook and pen sit next to the clothes. The notebook is empty, but it looks as if several pages have been ripped out. The trash bin by the rickety corner desk is empty, as is the desk itself. A cheap blue razor and toothbrush sit on the sink in the bathroom. In the shower there is a small bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap. It strikes Steve as immensely odd to see Tony Stark, once an avid connoisseur of creature comforts, forced into to such bare-bones living conditions.

Tony Stark would not live here. But maybe the Iron Soldier would.

Eventually, Clint perches on the desk and Steve and Nat take a seat on the bed. It creaks worrisomely under Steve’s weight but otherwise holds up under the strain.

In the dim yellow light of a single, dying bulb, they wait. In the stillness of the room, Steve’s mind turns over a dozen possibilities about what has happened to Tony. None of them are pleasant.

After what feels like hours, there is the scraping of a key in the lock and everyone’s eyes are upon it in an instant. The knob turns and the door opens up with a slow, agonizing creak.

And in walks Tony.

He is dressed in jeans and utility boots and a thick red flannel shirt that hides the tell-tale glow of his arc reactor. A navy blue baseball cap is pulled low over his eyes to conceal the upper half of his face. In the instant that he spots them, the remaining glove is activated and pointed right at them, repulsor charging up with a whine that builds and builds like the tortured torrent of Steve's own thoughts.

Steve stands up slowly from the bed, head spinning, hands raised unthreateningly. He makes a good show of looking harmless, but Tony isn't a fool, and his hand does not waver. “You know me?” Steve asks guardedly. 

Tony hesitates. “I don’t know.” It’s an honest answer and much less hostile than the first time, and something lifts in Steve’s chest just a bit, only to crumble at the utter devastation on his friend's face. Uncertainty is a messy, cruel sort of torture. What they've done to him is inhumane.

“I’m Steve,” he says gently, because Tony looks a little too much like a caged animal. “That’s Nat And that’s Clint. We’re your friends. We’re here to help you.”

Tony’s eyes flit back and forth between them, narrowing into acute slits, examining each of them for a hint of deception. “If you’re my 'friends' and you're here to help me, then why do you all have weapons?”

”We don’t wanna use them,” Clint says, still perched on the desk, as always looking to be the most casual one in the room by far. “But you did try to kill Nat a few days ago.”

”Clint,” Nat admonishes as Tony averts his eyes to the floor. Steve thinks he sees a tinge of shame there.

“That wasn’t me,” Tony says quietly. 

“We know, Tony,” Steve says, suddenly aching with the urge to pull Tony into a hug.  _Where did that come from?_

Tony puts down the glove now, still eyeing them warily, but Steve counts it as progress. “Why are you here?” He asks, and everyone cringes at the blunt force of the question.

“Like I said, we’re just here to help,” Steve says gently. 

The gloved hand clenches into a dangerous fist. “I’m not going back there,” Tony says, the warning implicit in his tone, in the tightness of his muscles and the way he's positioned his feet so he can jump into action at the slightest provocation.

”We know,” Steve says quickly. “We don’t expect you to.” The fist relaxes slightly. “We’ll take you some place secure. Somewhere you can recover where they won’t be able to find you.”

The fist clenches painfully tight, hands shaking, head shaking emphatically. “No. They’re too powerful. They always find me. Every time.”

Nat stands and plants herself firmly in front of Tony, arms crossed. "You're not wrong. If you come with us, they may find you, but at least we'll be able to fight them together. But if you stay by yourself, and they find you, you won't stand a chance," she says unwaveringly. Steve can see in Tony's eyes that he knows she's right. But he does not move, and his silence weighs more and more heavily on the room the longer it stretches.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, Clint is the one who speaks. “I have a safe house. It’s secure.” When all eyes turn on him, he shrugs. “What? I have secrets too.” And then to Tony, "It's off the radar. You'll be safe there. You have my word, as little or as much as that means to you."

* * *

They hit a bit of turbulence and it jostles him roughly, but he keeps his face impassive. For the better part of an hour, he's been watching from his window seat and painting his thoughts on the blank canvas of the snowy landscape below. Why had he come with them? Was it trust? Recklessness? Or was he just tired of fighting? He is tempted to close his eyes, because exhaustion is pulling at every fiber of him, threatening to unravel him, and part of him thinks he could, because somehow his body feels more at ease around these people than his own mind. Muscle memory, maybe. They'd told him they were his friends, and maybe some small part of him still remembers that, on some level.

The blue eyed man had looked so sure when he'd said it, too. As if his own raw conviction or stubborn will could somehow bring all of those memories back.

Steve. The man's name is Steve. That name feels right, somehow. After he had run, he’d spent a week thinking about these people, grasping desperately for even a small piece of his shredded memories that would give him some clue. He'd bought a small notebook from a convenience store, and filled the pages with everything he knew. Then, he'd discovered he didn't know much of anything, and in a fit of frustration, he'd ripped out the pages, thrown them in the wastebasket, and set fire to them with the repulsor glove.

The one thing he does have is this: Steve’s face - younger then, no beard - above him, looking down with concerned eyes, and then after a moment, a relieved smile. It's the one thing he can truly call his own, this memory, and he guards it oh so carefully.

He has replayed that scene so many times in his head, but nothing new ever comes with it. It’s maddening. Makes him want to bang his head against something on the off chance that it would knock something loose. Which, he knows it won’t. 

The deadly red-haired woman and the sardonic archer have dutifully avoided him since they stepped on the jet. He intercepts nervous glances every few minutes, which he has learned to just shrug off. He finds that he is good at pretending to be unshakeable, and he wonders not for the first time what he'd been like in his other life.

The other one, the soldier, _Steve,_ is the only one that doesn't treat him like he's been cursed.

But speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Steve Rogers settles into the seat across the aisle from Tony with a gracefulness that belies his imposing stature. ”We’ll be at the safe house in about an hour.”

He nods, avoiding those piercing blue eyes. He feels like he could lose himself in them, and when he stares long enough, he gets the feeling that he’s found something precious and long-lost to him. He can’t quite put his finger on what it is about those eyes, but it must be home that he sees there. 

"You'll be safe there. We'll protect you from Hydra and from S.H.I.E.L.D."

He thinks of all the times he'd tried to escape Hydra, how every time they'd brought him back and reset him even more brutally than before. How every time he'd lost just a bit more of himself. He feels that evil, that programming, still lurking just beneath the surface of his skin. He does not fear Hydra, but he does fear himself.

"But who will protect you from me?" he says quietly, his words condensing into thick fog on the window in front of him. It's the unspoken question that's been careening around the jet since they all boarded. He sees it in the others' faces, in the drawn, guarded lines that appear there when they look at him. He sees it in his own face when he looks in the mirror, can still remember the urgent, prickling panic that spread through his limbs every time he'd lost control, every time Hydra had _taken_ it from him.

And yet, this man who has seen him deadly and ruthless has the nerve to say, "No one. We don't need protection from you. You won't hurt us." And bless him, he sounds so sure of it. It's almost enough to make him believe. Almost.

* * *

The soldier sits with him in silence until the archer calls back a heads-up from the front. And then they're landing and he's trailing behind them down the ramp feeling oddly out-of-place and battling through the sudden onslaught of sunlight to take in his surroundings.

There's more green than he's ever seen, in this life and probably in the last as well. It's nearly overwhelming, the sheer simplistic beauty of it. It resonates with some long-lost desire deep inside of him and threatens to make him feel almost peaceful. Rolling hills surround them from all sides, punctuated by various types of vegetation and patches of melting snow, and trees scrape the skyline as far as the eye can see. He breathes it all in, and for the first time, he feels maybe the soldier was right. Maybe he could be safe here.

* * *

The two-story farmhouse sits unobtrusively atop the idyllic landscape. It's looks comfortable. Worn-in, yet functional. The faded green roof probably serves to provide some camouflage, concealing it from being seen from the air. The cacophony of the animal sounds that he hears hints at sustainability, clearly allowing for the procurement of resources without having to take unnecessary risk by going into town. And yet, there are several things about this place that Steve can derive no apparent practical purpose from. The baseball glove lying in the dusty driveway. The pink handlebars of a child's bicycle peaking out from the behind side of the house.

Steve's eyes narrow. "Clint, what is this?"

Clint looks at Nat, who lowers her eyes contritely. There's a little glimmer of mirth in Clint's eyes. "Just a little insurance plan that Fury helped me set up, off the books."

And suddenly two children are bursting from the house, tearing up the dusty ground between them and Clint, and launching themselves into his arms. A very pregnant woman follows more slowly behind, but her face betrays that she is every bit as excited to see him as the children. Clint, who has been spinning the children around, growling playfully at their delighted squeals, stops when he sees the woman. His face splits into an even wider grin. 

"Hi, honey. I'm home," he says, and the woman's eyes twinkle. He pulls her into a warm embrace and kisses her cheek. She chuckles.

And Steve feels like he might be having a stroke.

Clint turns back to them, hand resting around the woman's shoulders. "This is Laura."

The woman waves, and Steve catches the glint of gold on her left hand.  _Barton, you sneaky bastard._ "Hi. I already know all of your names," she says kindly. Then, she catches sight of Nat and pulls her into a big hug. _So Nat knew, too._

And before anything else can be said, Clint is whisking them all inside, saying something about a shower and dinner and not enough rooms and doubling up. Before Steve can process any of this, he finds himself in a large, comfortable bedroom in the attic with Tony and two double beds.

They stand silently for a moment until Steve clears his throat in an effort to purge the awkwardness from the room and says, "You got a preference?" with a small gesture towards the beds, even though he knows his Tony always takes the bed on the right. But this Tony shakes his head. And Steve takes the bed on the left.

Tony sits down on the bed to the right and examines his hands with a bit too much interest. Steve turns around to check out his own sleeping situation when the question emerges. "You didn't know, did you?." And it's more of a statement than a question, and Steve doesn't have to ask what he means by it.

"...No. But I do understand why he kept it a secret." And he does, really. He's known Clint for years. The initial shock had worn into a slight feeling of betrayal, which, within minutes of seeing Clint with his family, had been blown away like the dust under their feet.

Tony nods, but his gaze is still directed downward, at his hands. Steve misses seeing those deep brown eyes, full of mirth or anger or _something_. And every time he's deprived of that, he feels just a bit more desperate. "He did it to protect them," Tony says quietly. "And now, I'm here, in their home." He leaves the implication of that hanging in the air.

Steve sits down on the other bed across from Tony, and the two beds are so close that their knees nearly touch. "Clint is a careful man. If he really thought you were a risk, he wouldn't have brought you here. He knows you. He knows you wouldn't hurt his family."

Tony is shaking his head and Steve knows he's losing him. In a last-ditch effort, he places a hand on Tony's knee. Tony freezes but doesn't pull away. He's holding his breath. " _I_ know you, Tony. You're not a threat. Please believe me."

Tony's eyes are wide and unseeing, haunted by the vestige of some insidious memory. "I want to," he whispers.

* * *

When Steve makes his way downstairs, dinner is being served and soft, easy dinner conversation floats up from the table. Steve feels a bit at a loss, being the only person in the room who does not know Clint's family, but he takes a seat next to Nat and greets Laura warmly. The sounds of laughter and play whirl around outside and Steve looks questioningly at Clint.

"The kids already ate. We figured they might be a little much at first, for ..." She trails off, hand gesturing vaguely up the stairs. Steve nods. It was a good call.

"Where's Tony, Steve?" Nat asks.

Steve shakes his head. "I don't think he's coming down."

"Clint told me what happened," Laura says quietly, grabbing Clint's hand, and Steve remembers that she's had some experience with this kind of situation. "Just give him time, and space when he needs it."

Steve can recall many late nights with the team when talk had turned personal. Tony and Rhodey had always had a plethora of entertaining, ribald tales from their wild college days to regale everyone with. Thor, too, had spun tales of blood and war and sex that made even Tony's eyes widen with astonishment. Steve had never had much to share, and now that he thinks about it, neither had Clint. Now, Steve knows why. He shakes his head ruefully at the thought.

They pass the rest of the meal with innocuous small talk. The tractor finally bit the dust. Laura tried with her limited mechanical knowledge to fix it but had no luck. The old milk cow, Moo (named by Clint's young son), got out the other day, and it took them two hours to find her. Steve listens intently, astonished at the life that these people have managed to build against all odds.

When the meal is over, Steve offers to help with the dishes, but Laura hands him a heaping plate and motions upstairs with a smile. Laura glows, golden and warm, sweet and knowing, and Steve sees, oh he sees why Clint has kept this small slice of paradise hidden away from the corruption of the world. He trudges upstairs, plate in one hand and an extra dinner roll in the other, which Laura had handed him hastily before he'd gone, just in case he hadn't gotten enough to eat. "Clint told me about your appetite," she'd said knowingly, and the hint of affection he's beginning to feel towards her grows even more.

Steve knocks gently to announce himself before stepping through the door, and Tony, who is still seated in the same position on the bed, only jumps slightly. Steve sets the plate down on the bed carefully, like a peace offering. 

"Laura saved you a plate. Thought you might be hungry," he says.

Tony nods at a vaguely defined spot on the floor in front of him but does not move otherwise. With a sigh, Steve throws himself back on the bed, taking a large bite of the dinner roll.

"You really should eat," he says, looking pointedly at the untouched plate. "My ma used to say, 'going through a bad day hungry only makes it worse.' It's best to solve your problems on a full stomach, I think."

Tony actually snorts at this. It's a soft, unsure thing, but something leaps in Steve's chest at the sound all the same. Tony picks up the plate carefully and takes a tentative bite. He winces slightly and Steve thinks his jaw must be cramping. He wants to ask when was the last time Tony has eaten, but he knows he probably will not like the answer. So instead, he settles for watching carefully to make sure Tony finishes the entire plate. If Tony notices Steve's vigil over his meal, he does not comment. Instead, he finishes up and heads off to the small bathroom connected to their room. Only when Steve hears the sound of running water does he close his eyes.

He must doze, because he is startled awake at the sudden sight of Tony, fresh out of the shower and wet hair sticking up every which way. He is clad only in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and his feet are bare. The arc reactor glows bright beneath his shirt, and Steve feels it wash over him all over again, that relief that Tony is alive and somewhat well and with him now, in spite of all that has happened. He aches to tell his friend this, but the right words do not come. He watches as Tony climbs into bed and buries himself beneath the blankets. The moonlight filters through the think curtains of the single window just enough for Steve to study Tony's profile. He feels the familiar itch in his hands at the urge to draw him, and he resolves as he drifts off to sleep that he will remember this in the morning and put it down on paper tomorrow.

* * *

No matter how many years he puts down on this earth, being woken by screams will never get easier. He shoots up immediately, disoriented, and his heart stutters painfully in his chest. His whole body thrums with it, and his hand shoots to his chest involuntarily. Only then does he realize the noises are coming from right next to him. Tony.

Steve scrambles out of the bed and lands awkwardly on the floor by the head of Tony's bed. Tony is convulsing, his body drawn in on itself painfully tight. His face is red and veins bulge on the side of his neck as he cries out hoarsely. They're painful and deep and Steve finds himself blinking away the sudden threat of tears. Despite his better judgment, he grips Tony's shoulder and shakes him.

"Tony, come on wake up. Tony!" he calls.

And like that, Tony is shooting up from the bed. A low whir fills the space behind Steve, and  _shit._ Steve throws himself on top of Tony, pinning him to the bed. His free hand intercepts the device before it can light on Tony's wrist and form the glove. Tony's eyes are open, but they are far, far away. There is a dullness to them that Steve recognizes with a shiver. 

"Come on, Tony. Wake up. You know me," he says. Tony is straining hard against him, but Steve is completely on top of him, effectively pinning him to the mattress.

He lets out a growl of frustration. "Let me go," he sneers.

"Not until you snap out of it," Steve says firmly. Then, more gently. "Your name is Tony Stark. My name is Steve Rogers. We're at Clint's house now. You were sleeping, I think you had a nightmare. You're safe. Hydra doesn't control you anymore.  _Come on,_ Tony."

That seems to do it. Finally, the cloud of anger and confusion clears from Tony's eyes and he looks up at Steve with equal parts shock and relief and, thank god, recognition. "Steve." It's enough for Steve, and he eases off of Tony to sit next to him while he catches his breath. Tony doesn't move from his position, but brings a hand up over his eyes. His chest is rising and falling rapidly and Steve itches to just place a hand on him or do  _something_ to help, but he stops himself for fear of making anything worse. Steve waits for several minutes until Tony's breaths even out.

"You okay?" he asks after awhile, feeling a bit lame once he hears himself. Tony moves his hand just enough to peek out at Steve with one eye, and it's a look that's so patently Tony that Steve can practically hear the unspoken  _are you serious right now?_

"Okay, that was a stupid question. I'm not very good at this." And with little idea of what else to do, Steve talks, to fill the silence, to fill the empty spaces inside both of them. "I had a friend, a long time ago, way before you were born. His name was Bucky. You would've like him. And he would've like you, I think. Buck was a soldier. We shared this little apartment in Brooklyn, and when he was home on furlough, sometimes he'd have dreams about the war. Bad ones. They called it shell shock then, and no one realized how bad it could really be. Buck would scream sometimes, and he told me never to wake him up 'cause he didn't want to hurt me, but I always did it anyway." Steve smiles ruefully. "It probably wasn't the smartest thing, but I couldn't stand hearing him like that. I just wanted to help, but I didn't know what to do. So I'd make him some coffee and we'd put on whatever was on the radio that late and just talk. I think that helped."

Tony had been quiet during Steve's story and Steve half-wonders if he's asleep until he lifts his hand and slowly turns his head to Steve. Steve tries not to fidget as Tony scrutinizes him for a moment. And finally, Tony says incredulously, "How old _are_ you?" Steve can't hold back the laugh that bubbles up from deep inside. It's real and warm and it feels  _good,_ and he lets himself enjoy it for a moment while Tony looks on, completely unfazed. And when he gets his breath back, he says simply, "Too old."


	4. Chapter 4

Steve loses track of time as he sits with Tony on the bed. His friend has always had a way of doing that, he thinks. Of sucking you in until you lose yourself. He watches exhaustion pull his friend further and further down until he can stand it no longer.

"We should try to sleep. Clint says he needs some help with chores tomorrow." Tony nods silently, looking up at Steve through heavy-lidded eyes, and Steve crawls over to his own bed, which is so close to Tony's in the small room that he only has to plant one foot on the floor to get over there. When he's settled in, he says, "Goodnight, Tony." Tony doesn't answer. Steve sleeps.

* * *

Morning comes and with it, the terrible realization that Tony isn't there. It takes Steve from half-asleep to fully awake with a cruel, terrible jolt. He flies out of bed and down the stairs. While passing through the living room, he notices the clock. 6 a.m. The rest of the house is still asleep. He pads quickly and quietly to the door and steps outside. 

The sun has not fully risen, but the sounds of the world waking up are beginning to echo across the vast, idyllic landscape. Any other time, Steve would've been in awe of the simplistic beauty of it all. Now, he feels sick.

And then, jogging around the long winding driveway up toward the house, is Tony. Steve's breath catches in his throat. He forces it out in a quick puff and places his hands on his knees for a moment. Then, when he has collected himself, he walks inside.

By the time Tony reaches the house, Steve is nearly done making breakfast. "Morning," he calls out over his shoulder when he hears the door close. He is met, predictably, with nothing but stony silence. Undeterred, he fills a glass with water and slides it across the counter to Tony and continues in a friendly tone. "Breakfast is almost ready." Steve moves to dump the eggs he's been scrambling onto two plates, and he risks a glance at Tony as he does it. The glass of water is empty and Tony is seated at the table, eyes down, studying the grain of the wood intently.

Steve remembers the keen feeling of displacement after waking up in a strange hospital room 70 years in the future, and it hits him that Tony is probably feeling something similar. The sound of Tony's screams from the night before flit through his mind and he fights back a grimace.

He finishes breakfast and wordlessly carries the two plates to the table. He sets Tony's plate in front of him and to his surprise, Tony looks up at him and nods in thanks. Steve nods back and takes a seat across from Tony. "How was the run?" he asks.

Tony fixes wary eyes on him and nods belatedly. Steve feels this unfamiliarity like a punch in the gut. But he is nothing if not persistent. And a new determination wells up in him to make Tony say something, anything. He stows it away for later, not wanting to risk driving more distance between him and Tony. Between _the team_ and Tony, he mentally corrects himself.

They finish the meal in disappointing silence, and when Tony is done he gets up with his plate. Then, to Steve's surprise, he begins washing the dishes. Wordlessly, Steve joins him, and they clean up the kitchen in silence. It's oddly domestic, and Steve feels several desires careening together inside of him. Above all, it catches him by surprise how much he needs this. These quiet, peaceful moments where they can pretend that everything is fine, everything is normal. At least until the dishes are clean.

And then, when the last plate is put away and everything is in its proper place, the spell is broken. Tony is looking at the floor again and Steve thinks he must have the terrain memorized by now. Steve shuffles his feet awkwardly. "Thanks, for uh, for helping," he says, waving a hand towards the kitchen. 

Tony nods. "Thank you for breakfast," he mutters. It's barely audible, but it's something, and Steve feels that renewed determination welling up inside of him. He cants his head toward the list of chores hung on the refrigerator. "Think we could knock some of these out?" he asks. Tony looks relieved at having something to do and nods.

Steve elects to start with the first item on the list: chopping firewood in preparation for the incoming cold front. He heads outside to the chopping block he'd noticed yesterday when they'd arrived, and Tony trails dutifully behind him. Steve listens for his footfalls, and he can barely hear them. They're quiet and cautious, so different from the way Tony used to carry himself. Tony was always a warrior, but he wore the mask of a businessman. Now, he is something different. Some new creature borne of violence and pain, and Steve doesn't know how to handle him anymore, if he ever did before.

They chop wood for over an hour, and Steve is surprised at how natural it is for Tony. He strikes with confidence, hitting the center of the block each time, splitting each log into neat halves. While they work, Steve talks. It's a new habit for him; he has always been a man of few words. He supposes though that it is a way to cope with the silence. Before, Tony was the talker. He was the show. Steve was just there to watch and listen and laugh at Tony's unique sense of humor. Now the rolls are reversed, and in the face of this new challenge, Steve sticks with what he knows: war stories.

Steve thinks back to their mission in Tokyo, of the nights in the hotel room, of how Tony had seemed to be soothed by Steve's stories of the Howling Commandos. He hopes that the stories will have the same effect now, and so he talks. It's not until he mentions Nazis and Tony's eyes go wide does Steve realize that he never really explained himself to Tony last night. So he takes a big breath and starts from the beginning. The story of a scrawny, punk-ass kid from Brooklyn who just wanted a chance to punch some Nazis with his best friend. 

Throughout the story, Steve gets the sense that Tony is carefully schooling his expression, holding back unnecessary emotion, but something in his eyes tells Steve that the story touches him. And when Steve mentions Howard, Tony does not react, and when Steve realizes that he has to tell Tony Stark who his own father is, his throat goes unnaturally tight and his eyes burn with the threat of emotion. Tony receives the news with merely a nod, and Steve feels raw and worn out despite the fact that it's only 8:30 in the morning.

Around 9, the house rouses itself, and when Steve and Tony head in for a glass of water, everyone is situated around the kitchen and living room in various stages of wakefulness. Laura greets them warmly from the kitchen where she and Clint are preparing breakfast. Nat sits with the kids on the couch, talking quietly with them. When she sees Steve and Tony, she smiles. "Morning. You boys sure got an early start."

Steve returns the smile easily. "Thought we'd make the most of the day."

Laura and Clint finish breakfast and at Laura's behest, Steve eats again. If he's honest, he was beginning to feel hungry after the wood chopping anyway. Tony had disappeared upstairs as soon as he'd finished his glass of water, and Steve wonders if the crowd at meals makes him uneasy.

"How's he doing, Steve?" Nat asks eventually. A hush falls over the table and Laura and Clint are both watching him as well. At a motion from Laura, the kids run outside to play.

"I don't know," Steve answers truthfully. "He's quiet. Can't hardly get him to say two words to me. And he still doesn't remember anything."

Clint nods thoughtfully. "This kinda thing isn't an easy fix. It sucks, but it's gonna take time. And we have time. He'll stay here as long as it takes." He looks around the table. "You can all stay, as long as it takes."

"Thank you, Clint," Steve says sincerely.

"Is there anything we can do? To make this easier?" Laura asks.

Steve is about to say he doesn't know again, but then a thought strikes him. "He seemed to enjoy the chores. I think it helped him clear his head a bit."

"Well, there's always work to be done around here so that's no problem," Clint says. 

* * *

Later, Steve goes upstairs to check on Tony, and Tony is sitting on the bed almost expectantly waiting for him. He gets up and walks over to Steve, something clenched in his fist. When he drops it in Steve's hand, Steve sees that it's the bracelet. The weight of it feels familiar and he suddenly remembers last night in vivid detail. "Tony-" he begins, but Tony interrupts. It's just as well, because Steve isn't sure what he was going to say anyway.

"Take it. I'm too dangerous," he says with a hint of wretchedness scraping at his voice.

"You're not dangerous, Tony," Steve insists. As long as Tony believes he's a threat, he won't be able to heal from this. It's something Steve believes with his entire being.

Tony's eyes narrow. "You remember last night. Take it. Please."

So Steve takes the bracelet. And Tony looks just a bit lighter. Steve wonders if it was more of a shackle than a weapon of choice.

* * *

The rest of the day is passed with various inane amusements. Steve plays catch with Nat and Clint's son. Clint and his daughter practice archery. Laura sits and surveys them all happily. Steve had spotted Tony heading out in the fields earlier and had thought it best to leave him alone with his thoughts. 

When dinner is nearly ready, Clint goes out into the field and to everyone's surprise, he comes back with Tony. And even more surprisingly, Tony sits down to eat with them. Not wanting to make him nervous, Laura sends the kids out with their plates to the picnic table outside.

The atmosphere around the dinner table crackles with a bit more tension tonight, but Laura and Clint make an active effort to keep the conversation going. Eventually, Clint addresses Tony directly. "I saw you lookin' at the tractor earlier. Think she's a lost cause?"

Tony looks surprised. "I...don't know."

Clint hums lightly. "You know, I bet you could fix her."

Tony shifts in his seat but maintains eye contact with Clint. "Why do you say that?" he asks.

Clint smiles. "Because you're the best damn mechanic I've ever met in my life."

Tony's jaw clenches and there's a warning note in his tone now. "I've already told you, I don't remember-"

"Ah, 90% of that shit is muscle memory, anyway," Clint interrupts, purposefully keeping his tone light. "I bet you'd be surprised what you remember. Worst case scenario, you don't remember but at least you tried." Tony looks at him suspiciously, but Clint continues undeterred. "Look, spring thaw is coming soon and we are gonna need that thing in about a month or so. We're kinda desperate here, and we don't have the money for a new one, not on a government salary. All I'm asking is you take a look." He looks at Tony expectantly, reasonably, and eventually Tony nods.

"Alright."

Clint smiles. "Great. Hey, Nat did I tell you we finally got a new rooster ..."

And just like that, the conversation moves on, and Steve thinks he sees the hint of a triumphant gleam in Clint's eyes.

* * *

The next day, Tony gets up early and goes out to the barn, and by noon the tractor is fixed. Clint and Laura are ecstatic, and Laura pulls Tony into a hug, which, surprisingly, Tony doesn't pull away from. Clint claps Tony's shoulder lightly. "Knew you could do it," he tells him softly. Tony looks at him strangely as if unaccustomed to praise but nods anyway.

At lunch, Clint asks Tony for details about the tractor and Tony describes the problem and the repair. It's the most Steve has heard him talk since they found him, and there's a bit of life in the words that Steve has missed dearly.

The rest of the day passes more smoothly than the others, and Steve goes to bed early, satisfied from a full day of work.

* * *

He waits until everyone is asleep before he creeps downstairs. His body is too awake to sleep and lying in the bed had been pure torture. So instead, he pulls a book at random from the shelf and sits on the couch to read. Then, a slight creak of a floorboard and he puts the book down on full alert. The archer makes his way into the living room. "Can't sleep?" he asks casually.

"No."

"Me neither, you mind if I sit?"

"Go ahead."

Clint sits down on the couch next to Tony, and judging by the fact that his clothes are un-wrinkled and his hair is perfectly neat and he bears no visible marks of tiredness, Tony guesses he was never asleep to begin with.

The archer is talking now. Tony listens.

"I don't know how much Steve's told you about us, but back when the team was new, we faced an alien threat. Guy named Loki, a real dick, basically a god from another planet. He was incredibly powerful, and he had this scepter that gave him the ability to control people if he touched them with it. Well, he got me. Made me into one of his lackeys, forced me to fight my friends. Nearly killed a few of 'em. Then, Nat found me and she set me straight. Turns out the cure was blunt-force trauma to the head," he says with a chuckle. "So after that, the mind control wore off, but the memories of what I did and the memory of that feeling of total helplessness didn't go away. It got to me, affected my performance in the field. I had to take some time off. So I came home, and Laura helped me get my head right again. I realized that those memories don't go away, but you can't torture yourself over them, otherwise the guilt'll eat you alive. I also realized that it helps a lot to surround yourself with people who care about you." He lifts his arm in a sweeping gesture. "That's what I have here and ... that's what you have, too."

Tony is quiet for awhile after he is done speaking. "I didn't know," he says eventually. 

"Figured you didn't, but I wanted to tell you anyway," Clint says. "Thought it might help to know you're not alone in this. I know what it's like to feel like you can't trust the inside of your own head."

Something about the way he says it breaks something in Tony, and he looks at Clint desperately. "I can't shake it," he whispers. "That feeling of not being in control. The programming is still inside of me, and as long as it is, I'm dangerous."

"You're underestimating yourself. You  _are_ in control. I know it may not feel like it, but I've seen it. You could've killed Nat that day, but you didn't.  _You_ stopped  _yourself._ That was you overriding the programming, taking control. And every day you're away from Hydra, that programming breaks down a little more. And when that happens, your memories will come back. I know it. So let yourself be free."

It's a startling directive, but one that settles warmly over Tony like a comfort.

"Talk to us, Tony. Let us help you. That's what we're here for. God knows you were always there for us. Now we're here for you."

Tony looks him in the eyes. "Thank you."

Clint pats him on the back. "You're welcome."

* * *

The next morning, Steve wakes up to find Tony seated at the table with Clint's daughter, helping her with her math homework. It's such a peculiar sight that it freezes him in place, and he watches, shocked, as Tony gently guides her through an algebra equation. Clint's daughter may have her father's deadly accuracy with a bow, but she has the gentle sweetness of Laura, and she smiles appreciatively at Tony as he explains different concepts to her, laughs when Tony mutters something funny under his breath. When he looks up and sees Steve, he nods uncertainly, and Steve, finally broken from his daze, smiles.

Steve finds Nat and Laura in the kitchen and out of earshot. "You see that?" Nat whispers. Steve nods, still a bit dazed.

Laura smiles. "That's progress."

* * *

That night, Tony has the nightmares again, and when Steve wakes him gently, he doesn't attempt to call the gauntlet, which Steve sees as a small victory. He does look more disturbed than the last time, though, and this ignites a spark of worry in Steve's chest. "You okay, Tony?" he asks, aware of how ridiculous it sounds, but it's just something you say, damn it. 

Tony shakes his head. "I don't know, I-" He looks up at Steve, dazed. "You were there, but I don't-it's going away now, but I think it was-"

"-a memory," Steve finishes breathlessly.

* * *

The next day, Tony and Steve spend most of the afternoon repairing the barbed wire fence along the cow pasture. Nat, who had been helping Clint repair the barn, takes a break and brings some lemonade out to them. 

"Boys," she greets them easily. "You miss me?"

And Tony drops the pliers. He wavers slightly and grabs the wooden fence post to steady himself. The sudden paleness of his face alarms Steve. "Tony?! What's wrong?"

But Nat is staring at Tony strangely now, almost knowingly. She walks up to him slowly and grabs his arms gently. "You remember, don't you," she says softly. He's staring at her wide-eyed, and he opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He seems to be waging a silent war with himself now, and Nat is clutching him tightly, grounding him. "Come on, Tony," she says a little desperately. "You know me. You knew me first."

Steve watches, thrumming with anticipation, and he can  _see_ the memory in Tony's eyes. "Agent Romanov," Tony says wondrously. Nat smiles.

* * *

Tony doesn't remember much, just fragments and small details, like a faded dream (Nat worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. He met with her and Fury at some kind of restaurant. He had been dying at the time) but it's  _something._ The memory strikes Steve as odd. He's distantly familiar with the palladium poisoning from reading Tony's file. He even remembers seeing Nat's name as Tony's handler for that particular incident. But Nat never talked about what Tony was like at that time. And neither did Tony, although he has hinted to Steve before that he was not someone Steve would have liked at the time. Steve looks at him now and wonders how many masks his friend has worn over the years.

They head back to the farmhouse, work temporarily forgotten. Tony drops on the couch like a dead weight, looking a little dazed and mentally exhausted. Clint sits down next to him and whispers something that makes both of them smile. Then, Nat shoos Clint away and takes the seat next to Tony, and she tells him the story of the dying genius. She grazes lightly over the details, and Steve gets the feeling that she's holding back the more unpleasant ones for now. But something in the way Tony holds himself is lighter, and Steve has to think that it helps. The thing that nearly puts tears in his eyes, though, is that way that Tony looks at Nat now. Like she's not a stranger.

* * *

Tony is silent as they lie in bed that night, which is not unusual, but the silence is different tonight. Heavier.

"Did hearing the story help you remember?" Steve asks.

"A bit," Tony concedes. "It's still just bits and pieces. But I get the overall sense that ... we knew each other, that she helped me."

"That's good, Tony. It's something."

Tony leans on an elbow then and shifts towards Steve. "Romanov isn't the first one I remembered."

"What?"

"The first time I saw you, I got this flash of something, you looking down at me, looking worried. It was just a small fragment, but it gave me the sense that I had known you before."

Steve wracks his mind for the memory, and then- "Were you lying on the ground, looking up at me?"

"Yeah," Tony says, and Steve can hear the hope there. He smiles.

"That was right after the Battle of New York. Aliens invaded. We helped stop them, and you ... you nearly died sacrificing yourself to save the city. We didn't get along when we first met, but when you were laying there on the ground, not breathing, all I could think was that I was wrong about you. I thought you were some rich spoiled asshole, but I learned that day that you were so much more than that. And then you woke up and the relief I felt, I knew then that you were someone I wanted on my team." Steve laughs at the memory. "You wanted to try shawarma when you woke up. So we did."

Tony utters a soft expletive and something in the tone of it makes Steve's head whip around to look at him.

"I remember that," he says, eyes wide. "It was this little restaurant. Broken glass and debris everywhere. And we just sat at a table and ate." He huffs, astonished. "I don't know how that place was even open."

Steve's eyes are bright with unshed tears, but he laughs. "That's New Yorkers for ya." And the way Tony looks at him then, like they just might be friends, leaves Steve feeling soft and warm.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! Sorry for the delay, but here's the final chapter, and I'm adding a "post-credits scene", if you will.

The memories come back to Tony faster now. And with every new memory, he regains a piece of himself. Steve sees it in his eyes, in the way he holds himself. It's a filling up of his soul, a new warmth in his gaze, and Steve feels the distance between them shrinking. They have become nearly attached at the hip. Steve is endlessly relieved to have his old friend back, and he has a stabilizing affect on Tony that both of them appreciate. Finally, he has gained Tony's trust, and finally, they are friends again.

Tony mainly remembers events and details that are not solely tied to his own life. He remembers the Battle of New York, but he does not remember his parents or his childhood. Steve helps him fill in the gaps, but he can tell that not every story sparks an actual memory, so often Steve's anecdotes feel oddly impersonal to Tony, despite the fact that they are stories about him.

Often, the memories come on him suddenly, and Steve can see Tony physically fighting off the effects of Hydra's programming so that he can remember them. Sometimes, he fights through and the memory comes to him. Other times, it slips away like a dream after waking. Either way, the whole process is physically draining for Tony, and often Steve has to escort him somewhere to sit down for a few minutes afterwards.

The most intense experience Tony had occurred one afternoon when Steve had made cheeseburgers. "Hey, Tony, you want a cheeseburger?" he'd asked innocuously. And Tony had promptly turned pale and swayed on his feet. Alarmed, Steve had dropped the spatula he was holding and turned to grab Tony by the shoulders. He'd dropped Tony in a kitchen chair and sat in front of him. Their knees had brushed together, and Steve had put his hand on Tony's leg.

When Tony had come back to himself, he'd looked at Steve with red eyes and asked, "Who's Rhodey?"

* * *

Getting Col. James Rhodes out to the Barton farm had been easy enough, but dealing with a pissed-off former combat pilot who just realized his best friend being alive had been kept from him - that was a bit more difficult. Of course, when Steve had told Rhodes over the phone, his first reaction had been astonishment and then intense relief, but when the initial shock had worn off, and he'd realized how long they had kept the information from him, he'd been practically livid. Steve, embarrassingly and probably due to his issues with military authority, had ended the call with a "yes sir" when Rhodes had demanded to know their location.

Rhodes flies to the Barton farm in the War Machine suit in order to avoid detection. Everyone gathers on the front porch to greet him like some bizarre welcoming committee, and Steve can't help but feel like a scolded child anticipating punishment. When Rhodey lands and steps out of the suit, Tony looks on in amazement. It strikes Steve as endlessly odd that he still doesn't remember Iron Man. 

"Oh my god, Tony," Rhodey says desperately, and he wastes no time gathering Tony into a tight hug. When he pulls away, he holds Tony at arm's length, searching his face. "You know me, right?" The question is raw like an open wound. 

"I think so," Tony says softly, and the relief on Rhodey's face is evident.

They sit inside and Rhodey grasps for any and all details that Tony remembers about his life. The slightly tormented look on his face as he listens to Tony is telling, and Steve shares the sentiment.

Later, Rhodey takes Tony outside and they sit out on the porch for a long time. Steve knows Rhodey is telling Tony the story of how they met. He's heard bits and pieces of it himself over the years, but he knows that Tony and Rhodey's friendship is one for the ages. Despite their very different but equally busy lives, they've still managed to remain best friends. Their friendship is easy, like breathing. So different from Steve and Tony's tumultuous relationship. Steve can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. He has always felt like he struggles for every inch he gets with Tony. And yet, as he watches Rhodey lead Tony around the War Machine suit, talking animatedly. As he watches Tony's eyes light up with something that's not pain or fear. As he sees Tony smile crookedly at something Rhodey says. He knows that good things are worth fighting for, and he will fight for Tony Stark.

* * *

Fighting  _with_ him, however, turns out to be a different game entirely. The back half of Clint's barn has, in recent months, been converted into a makeshift gym where he teaches his children self-defense. Laura already knows every trick in the book and Clint assures them that if she weren't so pregnant, she could take on any one of them. And Steve believes him.

Tony's quiet hesitance that he carries around with him daily completely disappears once he steps onto the mat. He and Clint spar first, and Clint goes down relatively quickly with a surprised yelp. Unable to break the hold Tony has on him, he taps out. They both stand, red-faced and panting, looking appraisingly at one another. "Damn, Stark. That's new," Clint says. Tony shrugs, running a hand through his hair which has fallen onto his forehead in the scuffle. Steve catches himself looking and immediately averts his eyes, feeling an annoying warmth in his face that wasn't there before.

"My turn," Nat says. She cracks her neck eagerly as she takes Clint's place on the mat, and Tony in response shakes out his arms expectantly. It's as if they have a language all their own, Steve thinks with a wry smile. And then the fight begins. Nat is shockingly quick, but so is Tony, and he matches her blow-for-blow. Several times, one of them nearly gets the upper hand, only to have the tables turned, and they end up pushing off of one another and circling, calculating, resetting the fight and then going back in for more.

Then, Nat sees an opening, a weakness, and she exploits it, coming down hard on Tony's unprotected side and pinning him. She grins triumphantly, but suddenly he is grinning too, and then in a quick twist of arms and hips, he is on top of her. Nat chuckles. "Very sneaky," she says with a grin, and he matches it.

"Weren't expecting that one?" He stands up and extends a hand.

She takes it. "Yeah, but now I'm wise. Don't expect to get me with that one again."

He chuckles. "Of course not."

All too soon, Laura is calling them in for dinner, which Rhodey made, and Steve feels a slight tinge of disappointment at missing his turn on the mat.

After dinner, Rhodey hugs Tony for a long time and then leaves. Tony watches the glowing trail of the War Machine's thrusters wistfully, and Steve wonders if he's yearning for Rhodey's company or for the suit. Tony still doesn't remember Iron Man. All he knows is the pain and guilt of being the Iron Soldier, and Steve hates that so deeply it hurts.

After dinner, Tony asks Steve to spar, and Steve can tell by the look in his eyes that he's curious how long he can last against a super-soldier. Steve is also curious, so he accepts the invitation. 

On the mat, Steve marvels at how much Tony has changed. His attacks, which used to be so heavy-handed in the suit, are light and quick. He is less hands-on with Steve than he was with Nat or Clint, clearly aware that if Steve gets a good grip on him it'll all be over. They both trade light jabs, Steve too afraid to hurt Tony and Tony too cautious to try to hurt Steve. Then, Tony targets his legs, and of course Steve's legs are his weak point, so Steve goes down. In the process, however, he catches the back of Tony's leg and Tony crumples on top of him.

They land, chuckling, chest to chest. Steve can feel the cold hard surface of the arc reactor pressed against his skin and fights the urge to shiver. Then Tony looks into his eyes and all of the humor is sucked from the room and it becomes him and Tony and every point of contact with him is suddenly burning. Tony's eyes traverse Steve's face curiously for a moment before the moment comes back to him and he pushes off of Steve with a soft, quick apology. They both brush off the moment, but they do not spar very long after that, and Steve wonders if the feeling of their bodies pressed together is still stuck in Tony's mind like it's stuck in his.

Steve doesn't sleep very well that night, needless to say. When Tony wakes from a nightmare, Steve feigns sleep. It nearly kills him, but something holds him back. He thinks about the sparring session again, and he realizes it's shame. He's ashamed. It's an overarching feeling, and he thinks it's not related solely to that moment when his mind had wandered ... He thinks of all that Tony has been through, and as he listens to his friend struggle to calm his breathing without disturbing him, he resolves to never let his personal feelings interfere with Tony's well-being ever again.

* * *

As it turns out, Steve is not the only one who has noticed a shift between him and Tony. One night, after a long hard day of manual labor, Nat finds Steve sitting out in one of the fields, just watching the stars. She sits next to him, barely making a sound. The only thing that had given her presence away to Steve was the slow, steady rhythm of her heart. She says nothing for a long time, because at this point, their relationship transcends words. They can have entire conversations without even speaking. Nat is acutely intuitive, though, and soon the need to be straight with Steve supersedes the peaceful allure of silence.

"Tony's really making progress," she says eventually, and Steve knows it's a placeholder for something more serious that she wants to say, but has determined that Steve isn't ready to hear yet. He hums affirmatively, still looking up at the stars, because if he looks down at her, it may just give him away. "But he wouldn't be where he is now without you, Steve. You need to know that. You've helped him more than any of us ever could."

"I don't know about that," is what he decides on. It's short and he can get it out quickly before his voice cracks.

"Well, it's the truth," she says simply. "You two have a special bond, you always have. He trusts you the most. Probably because you trusted him. When the rest of us saw a threat, you still saw Tony."

She's made him now. Knows what he's been trying so hard to hide from himself and everyone else. So, he puts all his cards on the table. "I miss him, Nat," he says softly. "It, seeing him like this, it ... does something to me. I just ... I can hardly stand it."

She touches his arm briefly, the barest whisper of a sensation, but it's very 'Nat' and very genuine. "I know, Steve."

"What's wrong with me."

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." She sighs then. "We can't help it, you know."

"Help what?"

"Who we love."

* * *

And somehow, inexplicably, hearing it out loud does something for Steve. It seems to lift the burden of it by just a bit. He feels freer around Tony, more natural. Sometimes, he allows himself a few moments to give into the pain, usually when Tony has a difficult time fighting off the effects of Hydra's programming or cannot remember something important. But all in all, Steve thinks that both he and Tony are healing at the Barton farm.

* * *

No good thing lasts forever. Especially in their line of work. So when Steve and Tony come down for breakfast to find Fury sitting with a very nervous-looking Clint and Nat, he can't say he's that surprised.

Tony, however ...

Steve feels him tense and instantly knows what's coming. Not wasting time on a single further thought, he steps in front of Tony and places a firm hand on his chest. He can actually feel Tony's heart beating underneath. Hard and fast. Angry. Tony, himself is vibrating with an aggression that is barely kept in check.

Fury, to his credit, does not react, although his eye glints with something that may be amusement or wariness. Steve has never been good at reading him. But Fury raises his hands placatingly. "I'm just here to talk."

* * *

In a matter of minutes, Fury lays out the entirety of it. The main Hydra base has been located. Siberia. The place they had kept Tony captive, tortured him, made him into something nearly unrecognizable. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs the Avengers to take down the facility. And more specifically, they need Tony, because he's the only one who is familiar enough with the schematics to navigate the base effectively. 

Tony had retained a neutral expression until that last part. His eyes narrow at Fury. "I thought I was a threat."

Fury shrugs. "I'm not perfect. And I'm willing to admit when I've made a mistake."

Tony considers it for a moment, and then nods. "Alright." He looks around the room at all of them. "I'll do it."

Fury nods. "Welcome back to the team, then."

* * *

He should feel happy, some distant part of him thinks as he watches the blur of ground beneath the quinjet as it eats up the miles between Clint's farm and Siberia like they're nothing. His friend, back from the dead, back on the team is cause for celebration. But somehow it just makes him sick, because what if something happens, what if Tony gets taken again, what if Steve isn't good enough to protect him, what if ... He could drown himself in the what ifs.  _That way madness lies,_ he thinks, and for the rest of the trip, he fights off the what ifs.

The cold is fierce and biting, and Tony tugs up the collar of the jacket he's borrowed. Surprisingly, he'd said no to the suit. All he wears is Clint's combat gear and the gauntlet. It's enough, he assures them. It's what he's used to. When the world is strange and foreign, stick with the pain that you know. When Steve moves up close behind him and asks if he's alright in a whisper, he responds with the barest of nods. "Let's do this," he says aloud. They move in.

The orders had been simple. Enter quietly, retrieve as much from their files as they could, and leave with a bang. Blow the place sky-high. Tony remembers enough to hack, he thinks, and Nat knows enough about stealing data to step in if necessary. 

There is an emergency escape tunnel that lets out a mile away from the base, so that is how he takes them in. It is not monitored by security cameras and sensors like the main base. It was not patrolled by guards either, last time he checked. It still is not. Stupid. But, then again, outside of Hydra, he is the only one who knew about the tunnel, and why would they expect him to come back?

The mile-long trek through the tunnel brings up a horde of unwanted memories. He visibly shakes them away at times, and he is thankful for the dim lighting so that no one sees him. Although, from the way Steve keeps glancing at him, he wonders if the serum they had told him about also heightened his senses. Because Steve looks like he sees. Steve always looks like he sees him, and it's one of the things that unnerves him and draws him to Steve at the same time. Steve walks close enough for Tony to feel his warmth, and as the memories of all of the terrible things that happened at this base crash down around him, he fights the urge to lean into Steve, to let that warmth seep down into his bones and fill the cold, empty parts of him.

* * *

Eventually, Tony pulls up short and Steve realizes that they've come to the end of the passage. He had noticed as they'd walked through the tunnels, that Tony seemed to be fighting a silent battle with himself as they'd walked. Steve knew it was the memories of this place, come back to haunt him, and his fingers had ached with the urge to wrap around Tony's arm or rest on his shoulder or offer some kind of physical support in the dark where no one could see.

Tony raises a silent hand and the soft footfalls of Nat and Clint cease behind Steve. Quietly, Tony pokes his head around the corner and eventually disappears entirely. After a moment, he comes back, motioning them forward. They follow, and eventually find themselves in a long hallway. They move quickly, and the distinct lack of cover makes the back of Steve's neck tingle with apprehension. Tony moves gracefully like Nat and Clint, with the practiced footfalls of a trained assassin. Which, Steve thinks with a sinking feeling, he is. 

They reach the control room without difficulty, and Tony moves around, hands moving wildly on the machines there with barely a sound. Tony works for awhile on one of the computers before inserting a USB. His fingers fly over the screen, and Steve watches with the same detached interest he feels when he watches Tony work in his lab. After awhile, the USB comes out and Tony signals for them to move. On the way out, Clint sets a charge on the wall. From there, they make their way to the South end of the facility, where they will set their next charge. Tony takes them through a back hallway that he remembers is rarely traversed, but they freeze when the heavy rhythm of footfalls echoes around them. Tony's eyes dart around wildly before landing on a heavy, reinforced door. He leads them through it and into a dark room, and they hold their breath in tight as two dozen or more Hydra agents march past in the hallway. When they have passed, Steve relaxes and allows himself to examine the room they've taken shelter in. 

It is bigger than he had thought, he realizes now. And everything is bathed in an eery yellow-green light that emanates from a long row of glass tanks along the back wall. The glass is clouded with some kind of gas, but Steve sees a vague human-shaped outline inside of the tank and his breath catches in his throat.

"Oh, god," Clint breathes behind him.

Tony walks toward the tanks, his face a mask of barely concealed horror. He stops in front of one of them, and his hand goes up to press against the glass. Something flashes in his face, and Steve images that it is recollection. He has wondered many times about Tony's time here, what they did to him. None of his imaginings prepared him for seeing the real thing. The horror curls rock-hard in his gut. He feels sick with it.

"Our latest wave of volunteers," a high, unsettling voice says from the darkness. The accent is thickly Eastern-European.

Tony's hand flies off the glass and his gauntleted hand comes up in defense. "Once again, our experiments were unsuccessful. But, if it is any comfort, they died quickly and painlessly." Finally, a man materializes. He is tall and thin, and his face is almost painfully angular. The man smiles. "Hello, Iron Soldier. I must say, I am surprised to see you here."

Tony's eyes are wide and his expression burns with pain and rage. He knows him, Steve thinks. He steps up to stand with Tony, and feels Clint and Nat do the same behind him. "Who are you?" Steve asks through gritted teeth.

The man barely spares a glance at Steve. "I am the man who created him," he says, nodding at Tony. "He was my greatest success. Our ... treatments were extreme. Most died. Others succumbed to madness later. Many killed themselves or each other. But your friend. He was stubborn. He survived."

Steve swallows thickly. "Why did you do this?"

The man chuckles. It's a terrible sound. "Why not? It is the ultimate weapon. Ruthless. _Compliant_." Something about the way he says the last word makes Tony look sick.

Steve moves even closer to Tony. "Well, you won't be experimenting on anyone else. We're here to see to that."

The man laughs again, this time in a way that sets every nerve in Steve's body on full alert. "You are mistaken. I was of course stalling you. My soldiers are here to stop you now."

Tony looks at Steve, something foreboding flashing in his eyes, and before Steve can respond, Tony pulls him to the ground just as a bullet zings by overhead. For a moment, they stare at one another, breaths mingling, the sounds of the ensuing fight echoing around them. "We need to set those other charges," Tony says. Steve nods, and together they push off the ground and make their way through the sea of converging Hydra agents. 

Seeing Tony in action without the suit is both impressive and unsettling. He is quick on his feet, but his fighting style is ruthless in a way Steve has never seen from him before. Steve pauses to watch him lift up a Hydra soldier from the floor and slam them into the ground, and curses his inattentiveness when he barely evades a bullet meant for his head. Watching Tony fight, Steve realizes they must've done something to give him an edge. He is not as strong as Steve, but he is definitely stronger than average. Perhaps the anger just fuels him. But perhaps, as Steve fears, it is not the only thing fueling him.

Tony is relentless as he leads them through the base, leaping fists-first into every oncoming wave of agents, and he does not ease up until the last charge is set. "Let's get out of here," Nat says, and Steve can't agree more. They have just 10 minutes to exit the building before it blows up.

The plan is to leave the way they came, and Tony leads them back around to the escape tunnels. When they make it to the narrow hallway that leads to the tunnels, it is packed with Hydra agents. For a moment, the agents just stare at them, and then Tony takes a deep breath and charges right into the middle of the fray like a madman, and it's enough to break the spell. The agents all converge, and Steve feels the urgency of their situation tingle down his spine. "Nat, time!" he calls out. 

Nat checks her watch while punching a Hydra agent with her other hand. "Three minutes!" she calls, her voice not quite as steady as it was a few minutes ago. They had a long way to go until the end of that hallway. 

When they are finally beginning to make progress, Steve hears the high, thin voice again. "Iron Soldier!" it calls out. It echoes loud over the intercoms.

Tony freezes for a second, barely deflecting a kick to the stomach. He swears under his breath, low enough that only Steve can hear.

And then, it begins. 

**Zhelaniye.**

Tony's eyes go wide. "Nonononono," he is whispering, still throwing desperate punches.

**Zhelezo.**

Tony's breathing is ragged, and Clint understands what's going on first. "Tony, don't listen to him, just block it out!" he yells.

**Reaktor.**

Tony falters, stumbles, and Nat takes down the Hydra agent that nearly guns him down. "We need to get him out of here _now!"_ she yells.

**Rasvet.**

Tony sways but keeps fighting. There is sweat beading on his forehead.

**Vosem.**

They're so close to the exit, but not close enough. Steve cuts through the Hydra agents with his shield, clearing out a path toward Tony.

**Torgovets.**

Tony screams as he blasts through a group of agents. His hand is shaking. "Steve, go!" he yells, as Steve yells back that no, they are not leaving without him.

**Devyat.**

Steve is not close enough to him. Nat and Clint are converging on him, too. None of them are close enough.

**Mstiteli.**

Tony goes down on his knees, his hands grasping at his head. Steve shouts. He doesn't know if Tony hears.

**Odin.**

Tony is so vulnerable now, but the agents are not touching him. They seem to know what is coming. Steve fights wildly to get to Tony, yells for Tony to listen to him, to fight it. He still doesn't know if Tony hears.

**Ovrag.**

Steve finally reaches Tony. He drops to his knees beside him, trusting Nat and Clint to cover him. Tony has gone still. "Come on, Tony, stay with me, come on, just stay with me," he mutters over and over and over. Tony does not move. Recklessly, Steve places a hand on either side of Tony's face and lifts his head up. His eyes are terrifyingly distant. "Tony, look at me," Steve pleads. 

For one terrible second, nothing, and then, the eyes blink. "Steve?" 

Steve can't hold back the relieved smile that breaks through. "Yeah, yeah it's me," he says a little breathlessly. "You okay?"

As Tony nods, the voice reverberates around them. "Iron Soldier. Are you ready to comply?"

Something glints in Tony's eyes then, something old and familiar that Steve has seen so many times over the years, that he recognizes as a bit of the old Tony. "No, I don't think I am," he says with a smirk.

They've only got one minute now, and Steve helps Tony up, and together, they fight. Clint gets nocked in the head, hard, and goes down on one knee with a grunt. Nat rushes to his side, and Tony's eyes widen with urgency. "Go!" he yells at Nat. She looks at him, startled. "Take him and go! I'll hold them off." He looks back at Steve. "Go, Steve. We're running out of time. I'll hold them back. You need to go," he says desperately.

Steve shakes his head, hard, slamming his shield down on a Hydra agent's head for emphasis. " _Not_ \- without you." Although, he does call out for Natasha to take Clint and  _go._

As Nat drags Clint through the tunnel, the first charge goes off. It sounds distant, but it shakes the ground beneath their feet. Suddenly, something connects  _hard_ with Steve's back, and he stumbles toward the exit. It's Tony, trying to push him to safety. "Go, Steve! Just go!" he yells, blasting furiously at the agents behind them. The next charge explodes, closer now, and behind Steve, Tony grunts and lists to the side a bit. 

"Tony!" Steve yells, and is relieved when Tony answers.

"I'm okay, go!"

"Not without you!"

Tony growls with frustration and viciously kicks a Hydra agent across the hallway and into the opposite wall. The next charge goes off, nearly sending them both to the ground. Some of the hydra agents are dispersing now, but some are fighting to get to the tunnel. To safety and to Nat and Clint. That can't happen. Steve and Tony place themselves in front of the tunnel. They'll fight until the very last minute, as close to the wire as they can get, and then they'll go.

The fourth charge sends Tony stumbling into Steve's side, and when Steve reaches out to steady him, his hand touches something warm and sticky and wet. "Shit, Tony," he says.

"I'm fine," Tony says through gritted teeth, smashing a Hydra agent in the face with his elbow as if to prove his point. Steve can see smoke now, at the very end of the hallway. Somewhere far too close to them, something is rumbling. The building is collapsing. More agents scatter, but a few are still vying for the emergency tunnel exit.

Steve feels the fifth blast in his bones. It rattles his teeth together, and the ceiling cracks apart above them. There is only one charge left, and Steve can see it, at the end of the hallway. There are three agents left. It'll be a close thing. 

Steve has just enough times to kick the last Hydra agent in the face and grab Tony by his clothes and sling him into the tunnel before the last blast goes off. Steve lands near Tony and crawls protectively over him, shield raised. The blast knocks the ceiling down, effectively sealing off the entrance to the tunnel. The tunnel itself quakes ominously, and Steve hauls Tony to his feet, pushing him down the tunnel, telling him to run. Tony stumbles a bit, but does what Steve says.

Steve has never tasted sweeter air than when they finally break the surface. Steve's knees sink into the cold wet earth, and beside him, Tony is sucking in the fresh air greedily. "Oh, thank god. Thank _god,_ we thought you two were dead." Nat. "I started to double back, and then everything exploded." Clint sits propped against a tree. He nods dazedly. "Clint might have a concussion, but he'll be fi- ... Tony?"

It's enough to snap Steve out of his daze, and he realizes that Tony's no longer knelt beside him, but lying on his side on the ground. His hand is pressed to his abdomen and his body is curled in on itself. "Tony!" Steve rolls him onto his back. His face is startlingly pale, but at least his eyes are still open. Steve pries his hands gently from the wound. "Let me see," he says softly, trying to quell his rising fear. He feels Nat behind him, looking on in concern.

The bullet seems to have missed any vital organs, but it is leaking blood at an alarming rate. Steve pulls off his jacket and uses it to staunch the flow of blood. Tony's eyes flutter and he grunts painfully as Steve presses down. "I know, I know, I'm sorry," Steve says quietly to him.

Then, there's a hand on his shoulder. "Steve, we need to get him to the quinjet."

Steve looks down at Tony, who meets his eyes determinedly. "I'm fine. Let's go." Admiration blooms warm in Steve's chest along with the worry, and he nods, gently helping Tony stand. 

Steve walks with Tony to the quinjet, one hand gripping Tony's arm that is slung over his shoulder with one hand held tight around his waist. Tony presses Steve's jacket tight to the wound, panting laboriously but never complaining. But soon, Steve is all but dragging him, and his feet are stumbling every few steps. Steve grips him tighter. "I've got you, it's alright," he whispers as they walk. He says it over and over, throwing it out to Tony like a lifeline, like it means something. And when Tony nods and plants his feet determinedly, Steve thinks maybe it  _does._

Only when Tony's knees buckle does Steve sweep an arm under his legs and pick him up. He had been holding out on that until now because Tony Stark is not a man who likes to be carried. But now, as Tony's head lolls against Steve's chest and he struggles to breathe, Steve feels nothing but a cold, familiar fear. "Come on, stay with me," he whispers desperately to his friend, clutching him tightly. "Stay awake, Tony."

Nat, who is supporting Clint to a lesser extent, looks over worriedly. "We're almost there," she says in a tight, urgent tone.

Finally, _finally_  they make it to the quinjet. Steve lays Tony gently on a cot in the back and Nat deposits Clint in a chair and brings out the medical supplies. Together, they clean and bandage Tony's wound, and Tony looks on with heavy-lidded eyes. He does not make a sound as they work on him, but his breathing is tight and shallow and sweat is pooling in the hollow of his neck. Steve whispers soft assurances to him as they go, and if Nat notices the reassuring extra touches that Steve gives him as he works, she does not comment.

When they finally finish, Nat goes back to check on Clint, who had been watching them with dazed concern from his chair. "He alright?" Steve hears him ask. "Yeah, he'll be fine," Nat answers after a moment. "He's strong." She sits herself down in the pilot's chair. "Let's go home," she says.

Steve does not leave Tony's side on the flight home. And when Tony's eyes start to flutter, he pulls down a thin blanket from a cupboard above the cot and lays it out over his friend. "You can go to sleep," he says softly. Tony does.

* * *

When they arrive home and Steve helps Tony stumble into the house, Laura has already put the kids to bed and is standing expectantly at the door with a large container of medical supplies. She looks resigned to Clint's injury and greets him quietly, placing a gentle kiss to his forehead. She places a hand on Tony's arm and asks if he can make it upstairs. He gives a tight nod, and together, he and Steve make their way arduously up to their bedroom.

Tony looks like he could fall asleep then and there, sitting hunched over on the bed, still wearing his borrowed combat gear. And when Steve starts to remove his boots and he doesn't protest, Steve knows that he's truly exhausted. Steve helps him out of his jacket and his shirt, blushing entirely too much, and he is relieved when Tony takes off his own pants and puts on the pair of sweats Steve has placed next to him on the bed (although Steve has to help him stay upright as he does it). Added movement seems to jar his injury, so Steve carefully helps him put on the t-shirt. After the ordeal, Tony all but collapses onto the bed, breathing too heavily for Steve's comfort. He removes a pill from the bottle Laura has given him and hands it to Tony. Tony stares at it for a moment and then shrugs and swallows it dry. Steve winces and Tony actually looks faintly amused through the haze of pain and exhaustion, although he remains quiet.

Steve pulls the blanket over him and adds an extra throw for good measure, smoothing them out carefully. Tony cracks a crooked smile, already feeling loose from the painkiller. "What, no kiss goodnight?" he teases, and then his eyes go wide as Steve brushes the hair off of his forehead and places a gentle, chaste kiss there.

"Goodnight, Tony."

* * *

Over the next few days, they come to the conclusion that Tony's resistance of the Hydra programming had been a sort of breaking point for him. And now, the memories come back more quickly and less painfully. Steve hardly leaves his side as he recovers, although Steve notes with distant worry that the wound seems to be healing a bit more rapidly than an average wound. Just a bit. Steve resigns to worry about that later. Tony opens up more and more, and he and Steve are frequently seen laughing over stupid jokes, touching one another on the shoulder or the arm, and Nat and Clint and Laura merely look on knowingly, sometimes with an exasperated shake of the head. Tony becomes the designated mechanic of the house, fixing whatever is broken, and Steve often sits and just watches him work, fascinated by the way his hands move. Laura loves Tony, and Tony behaves himself around Laura. The children also love Tony, because it turns out Tony Stark is a big softie when it comes to kids, and he often helps Clint's daughter with her math homework, and he and Steve often play catch with Clint's son while Clint trains with the her outside. Tony and Clint have developed an unlikely bond having both suffered the ill effects of mind control, and Clint is helpful if Tony has a bad moment here or there. Nat is Nat, and she treats Tony with the same exasperated fondness that she always has.

Then, one night, one of Tony's nightmares wakes Steve up, and shoots over to Tony's bed as Tony bolts upright, pale and panting. He places a hand on Tony's cheek questioningly, and Tony looks over at him with wide eyes. "Oh god,  _Steve,_ " he says desperately. 

"Tony, what's wrong?" Steve asks, the worry starting to build inside of him.

Tony grips his arms tight. " _Steve,_ " he says more significantly. "I remember. I remember it all."

Steve blinks for a moment, and then launches himself at Tony, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. He's rocking back and forth, whispering Tony's name over and over, and Tony is chuckling and patting his back, and when they pull apart from the hug they're both smiling like idiots.

* * *

They stay at the Barton farm for another week after that at Clint's request. "It'll give you some time to get your bearings," Clint says, placing a hand on Tony's shoulder. Tony smiles appreciatively, and Steve is struck once again by how beautiful he is.

They go on another mission while they're there. They destroy another Hydra base and it goes much more smoothly than the first time and Steve realizes that watching Tony kick some Nazi's asses is a total turn-on. And then the way he's  _looking_ at Steve on the way home,  _god._ And so, when everyone heads to bed, he and Tony rush up the stairs to their attic room hastily, and when they've finally shut the door, Tony slams him up against the wall and starts kissing him and Steve damn-near  _swoons, oh god._ They collapse on Steve's bed, Tony still on top of him, kissing everywhere he can reach, hands coming up under Steve's clothes, making him shiver at the contact. And then Steve sits up and they're both taking their clothes off and still trying to kiss one another while they do it, and then they're both  _naked,_ _oh god oh god,_ and they're kissing and touching everywhere they can reach and Tony is grinding down on top of him, and his brain short-circuits and pretty soon he's over the edge with his head thrown back, and Tony sucking at his exposed neck, and then Tony is shuddering along with him, head buried into Steve's neck, breath hot in his ear, and Steve has never felt like this before and he mumbles something incoherent to Tony as he catches his breath and Tony chuckles and  _snuggles_ down into the covers next to him, and he throws an arm around him and they're both asleep.

And when Steve wakes in the morning and Tony is still there, sleeping softly against him, he realizes he's probably never been this happy. It's terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

* * *

Saying goodbye to the Bartons and their little slice of life is harder than he would have ever anticipated. Clint finds it endlessly amusing that Tony actually goes out to say goodbye to the cow, and Tony makes some wisecrack about the cow being far more intelligent than Clint and Steve watches, hopelessly in love as Tony scratches the cow's head and she actually nuzzles him appreciatively. Laura and the kids hug them all tightly and Laura's daughter tells Tony that she's glad he's feeling better, because she's smart and observant like her parents, and Tony smiles sweetly at her and tells her thank you. And then they're off in the jet, Steve and Nat and Clint and Tony, headed back to the Avengers compound and back to a world with color and life and hope, because Tony Stark is alive and Steve Rogers loves him, and Tony just might love Steve, too.

As the quinjet touches down on the compound, Steve looks the window and laughs because out on the lawn are Bruce and Thor and Pepper and Rhodey and Happy, all waving and hollering and cheering. And Tony smiles and looks at Steve and nods, because whatever happens next, they'll do it together. Like they always have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!


	6. Post-Credits Scene

They stand in the hallway, all of them. They're all there for Tony, and usually he thrives on this kind of attention, but today he's apprehensive. All morning, he'd walked around the compound, attacking any project with near-manic energy, and talking a mile a minute. Steve found it endlessly endearing, and the smiles he was giving Tony all day were "gross", according to Clint, "sweet", according to Bruce, and "oh god Steve stop mothering me", according to Tony.

The din of excited conversation bleeds into the hallway from the next room, punctuated here and there by the click of a camera. Stark Industries had announced Tony's return the day before, and the world had practically exploded. Iron Man was back. Of course, a press conference had been called, and Tony, who usually loves press conferences, is bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet. When he makes eye contact with Steve, however, he smiles. Steve smiles back. Clint snorts, and then grunts painfully when Nat elbows him in the side.

Pepper steps into the hallway, all business but also smiling gently at Tony. "They're ready for you, Tony," she says.

Tony turns to them. "Alright," he says chipperly. "Guess I'll head out there." And then to Steve. "Do I get a kiss for good luck?" And the way he lifts an eyebrow and smirks, Steve knows he's only joking. 

But looking at him, Steve can't help but do it anyway. He sweeps Tony down with a dramatic flair, bending over him and kissing him like they used to do in the old days. And it's partly to call Tony's bluff and rile him up a little, and it's partly because Steve just loves him too damn much. Tony looks shocked and Steve hears Thor and Bruce chuckling. "Alright, now get out there," Steve says with a chuckle himself, pushing Tony out the door. And when Tony walks out, it's absolute pandemonium in the press room, but Tony is still smiling, and he looks so in his element, and it hits Steve then that  _yeah, he's back._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think! :)
> 
> For those of you who were curious about Tony's activation words, some of them were different from Bucky's in the movie since Bucky's held specific meaning relative to his character. Tony's were: longing, iron, reactor, daybreak, eight (Iron Man '08), merchant (since Tony is known as the "merchant of death"), nine, avengers, one, ravine (since that's where they lost Tony on the mission).
> 
> Also, if you're a visual kind of person, picture the Iron Soldier's hair as the length of RDJ's in the Sherlock Holmes movies. And picture the gloves he wears as the one Tony had in Civil War when he fought Bucky, cuz that shit was dope.


End file.
